Maxine Peake: 'I want to do something ridiculously silly next year'

Maxine Peake is returning to the London stage in a play described as an epic look at how we live now - but says she would love to do something frivolous afterwards.

The actress will star in the premiere of How To Hold Your Breath by Zinnie Harris at the Royal Court, which explores recent European history from the banking crisis to sex trafficking, and the cost of having principles.

Peake, 40, conceded she had become the go-to woman for tough dramas, having played Myra Hindley in See No Evil: The Moors Murders and the long-suffering wife and mother in The Village, as well as a barrister in Silk. She laughingly summarised the casting process as: “It’s gritty, get Peake.”

But she said: “You do reach a point where there’s only so much you can give. And everybody has seen you do it.” Peake’s big break was in Victoria Wood’s sitcom Dinnerladies and she said: “I started off in comedy which I think people forget.

“I thought maybe I would like to do something darker for a change and I got caught in that world. I want to do something ridiculously silly next year.” But she said the new play, directed by Court boss Vicky Featherstone, did allow her to stretch her comedy muscles.

Peake has just completed a run playing the title role in Hamlet in Manchester, where she lives. She was last on stage in London in Loyalty at the Hampstead Theatre in 2011.

How To Hold Your Breath will run from February 4 to March 21.