The Importance of Being Miriam: Canberra will discover up-front Margolyes

It was a moment that stood out, in a show filled with standout moments, but this one came at the very end.

Miriam Margolyes had just performed her one-woman show Dickens' Women in Canberra, in which she spoke about – and uncannily embodied – the range of female characters depicted in the novels of Charles Dickens, one of her favourite writers. It was a show both intimate and erudite, clearly springing from a well of private passion, and a razor-sharp mind.

But the key moment – at least for me - came during the question-and-answer session after the show. Margolyes – round and twinkly, unmistakable with her grey mop of curls and rotund frame – was seated on stage, stripped back and at the mercy of the crowd. One man had the temerity to ask one of the most thoughtless questions of the night: why, oh why, had she chosen to take part in films like the Harry Potter series?

You could feel, if not see, Margolyes rolling her eyes and sighing. The audience breathed out with her.

Her answer, though courteous, was terrifyingly blunt: she took on roles in films like Harry Potter so that she can afford to put on deeply personal money non-spinners like Dickens' Women, of course. If that was quite all right with him?

In preparing for this interview, I can't help remembering that answer, and contemplating all the work she has done in the three years since. The show she's now touring in Australia, The Importance of Being Miriam, is her most personal yet. It's a big call, given how many in-depth interviews she has given in Australia, and how open she has been about her sexuality – she had a polite Australia Day audience in stitches two years ago when, accepting Australian citizenship at a ceremony in Canberra, she explained that her partner was an Australian woman, "in case anyone didn't know I'm a dyke – and I'm very happy". She has also caused controversy recently with her strident, anti-Zionist views; a non-religious but "very enthusiastic" Jew, she is openly aghast at the re-election of Benjamin Netanyahu.

She's also effusive about her love of many things – Australia, literature, Dickens, Oscar Wilde, theatre, travel. Her enthusiasm – conveyed as are all her views in her beautiful, cut-glass British accent that catches one so off-guard when she slips in the odd reprimand or foul language – is infectious. She is, in other words, an incredibly loveable and much-loved figure, a ubiquitous presence in British television and cinema, and now someone we can call our own.

Much of The Importance of Being Miriam delves into her love of literary giants – Shakespeare, Dickens, Wilde – with her inhabiting, as only she ever could, some of her favourite characters. But she also reflects on the family influences that have shaped her career, a feature that renders the show so personal.

This, at least, is what I have been able to glean from the guff, without having seen the show. And so, as we settle down for our phone chat – she's speaking from Adelaide, where the show's second leg has just opened – I ask what I want to know most: what has brought on a show that is, in her words, "a kind of life statement, in a way, about the things I care about"?

"Being the age I am (73), I will be starting off the evening explaining exactly what you asked me," she says.

Well, I don't want to give too much away, I say, cautiously.

"Don't worry, I won't allow you to! If I think you're infringing on the text, I'll tell you right away," she says.

"That's what I'm like." Her tone is both cheery and faintly menacing.

Luckily, there are many other topics to cover.

Reading, for one, and literature. A great reader from childhood, she's adamant she would be "much the poorer ... and stupider" if she hadn't had literature to sustain her through her early years. She began with schoolgirl capers, Enid Blyton and Biggles, before moving on to histories and, inevitably, Dickens.

And while she doesn't think much of Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury set – she was in a recent radio sitcom in the UK called Gloomsbury – and adores the small, finely drawn canvas that Jane Austen so meticulously covered, she is just as effusive about the "sweep and passion" of the Brontes.

"They're crucial!" she says.

Her advice to parents with bookish children is to read aloud as much as possible, especially Dickens, which was written to be heard and embodied through the voice.

But, like many lifelong readers, she mourns the fact that reading is becoming something of an endangered activity.

"I'm sure [other people] don't read enough, because there's too much competition from various screens of various sizes, and that's where people are spending their time and it's very sad," she says.

She's also a great re-reader, if only because she has what some might describe as the luxury of forgetting books almost as soon as she's read them, making re-reading a completely fresh experience each time.

How incredible, she agrees, to think that there are people who find no pleasure in reading.

But then, again, she concedes, there's always football.

"I don't get pleasure from going to a rugger match, or one of those Aussie Rules footballs. I cannot imagine watching a group of sweaty thugs thumping each other. To me, it's the nadir of existence," she says.

This, despite having becoming an Australian citizen?

"Becoming an Australian doesn't mean that I have to leave my critical faculties behind. On the contrary, taking on a new citizenship sharpens your critical ability, and that is why I will never be interested in football. I just think it's crass," she says, cackling.

"I can't stand it, so I have to accept that some people will not be able to stand reading, it's just not for them. But it is for me."

She is also a lover of contemporary biography, and history, as a way of examining her world and attempting to understand it. The modern world, she says, and some of its more recent events, are baffling to her – not least what's going on in Israel.

"A lot of people are very vocal in their disapproval of my views, which I absolutely accept. But I will continue to voice my revulsion of the actions of the government of Israel, because I think that they are destroying Israel far more than anything that I say would harm Israel," she says.

"I don't hate the Israelis, I just hate what they do ... I don't think there should be a two-state, I think there should be a one state, but I don't think it should be a Jewish state, I think it should just be a country and that's where people live and get along and get on with their lives. I hate the fact that everything is borders and separation and barriers. We have to learn to get along. It's so divisive."

Although her well-known thoughts on the matter won't form part of the show, she has no intention of staying silent on the topic – except on stage.

"The show is for entertainment. It is to make people laugh, it's to make people think, and in a couple of places, it's to make them cry. And I'm to say that it has so far succeeded doing all those things," she says, laughing.

"Sex comes into the show quite a bit … a lot of sex, but no nudity."

She also plans to talk about her long-time partner – a woman of a similar age of whom she will say little except that she grew up at Duntroon, hence her continued connection to and avowed love for Canberra.

Performing the show, is, she admits, an emotionally wrenching experience.

"It actually really is a draining experience, every night. At the end, I am knackered!" she says, laughing.

"And on the days when I have two shows, I really don't want to see people in between, though people always want to come and say hello…I love contact, but at the end of the show, I just want to go home to bed. This one is particularly wrenching for me. It's dedicated to my mother, who features in it, and it makes me sad."

Why is that?

"Well, if you come and see it, you'll know!" she says, quick and triumphant. "I'm not giving away for free what I'm expecting people to pay for!"

She need have no fear of that; the show has been a sellout since it opened last month in Melbourne, with standing ovations every night.

It is, she says, highly gratifying to be wholeheartedly welcomed in the country she such a long connection to.

"It's a wonderful feeling, it's really very important. A lot of the show is about my experience in Australia," she says.

"It makes me terribly proud and happy – I just feel I have been accepted, and I have come to a new home."

Miriam Margolyes will be performing The Importance of Being Miriam at the Canberra Theatre from May 6-9.