Michelle Dockery and Laura Aikman have enough iconic TV moments between them to fill a series of Gogglebox, but that hasn't stopped the pair feeling the pressure as they take their first steps back onto the stage in Stratford East's new play Bloodsport: After Helen of Troy.

For Dockery, the show is her first since the National Theatre's Network in 2018, and for Aikman, her first since she was a teenager.

Speaking exclusively to Radio Times about this, This City Is Ours and Gavin & Stacey star Aikman said: "I didn't have a handle on how nervous I was going to be, we're both very nervous and we both still are.

"It is very heavy, and you really feel all of the emotions that you're talking about in the play every night, so I'm just trying to figure out how to deal with that for another four weeks."

Adding to the weight is the fact Bloodsport is the sophomore work from writer Ava Pickett, who has stormed her way onto the scene in recent years with the hit show 1536. Like her first script, the play delves into the lives and status of women throughout history, focusing this time on the legendary Helen of Troy after she returns from the war.

The synopsis reads: "Years after she walked out on her family, Helen has returned home after a war fought in her name. Her husband celebrates, her childhood friend Cee does not. Over the course of this first fragile night of peace time, wounds reopen, loyalties fracture and the true cost of a woman's choice to leave her life is made clear.

"A play about friendship, motherhood, and what happens when the woman whose face started a war, returns home to finish it."

Aikman said: "Ava is so brilliant at writing for women, and this is really the female answer to The Odyssey. It's the female perspective."

Aikman plays Helen's childhood friend Cee, a "Tuesday night, Toby Carvery sort of girl," who is seemingly delighted and devastated by Helen's return.

She hinted at how the show leaves both women in dangerous and difficult positions, saying: "It's about Helen and her leaving and it's also about Cee and her staying, and how those two women find each other 10 years later and how society judges both of them for their decisions.

"It's about women's place in society, violence against women, the pressures on women, the power of a woman saying no being a violent act."

Check out the trailer for Bloodsport: After Helen of Troy:

Adding to its relevance, the show is rehomed to modern-day Essex, which the actress says makes it all the more relatable: "We're speaking in accents that you recognise and in language that's really understandable. I just think it makes it less intimidating for people and yet it's not dumbed down in any way. The themes we're talking about are really heavy and interesting."

Luckily, despite the heaviness, she said her and Dockery "hit it off immediately".

"There's a scene where Helen and I kind of have it out a bit and the language that Ava uses is so real – it's full of stutters and wrong words which makes it so believable – and I auditioned doing that scene and I remember Michelle just sat across from me and cried.

"And it's remained the heart of the play for me. I love doing it with Michelle. It scares me every time we do it but I find that whenever I can see her everything is fine.

"I feel like we've explored so much. Ava is so good at looking at female friendship and the complexity of it and the expectations we have of each other as women that I don't think men have of one another as friends. I think female friendship, we rely on each other for more than men do."

Joining the pair on stage is a full cast who complete a range of perspectives and reactions around Helen's disappearance: Maimuna Memon as Dani, Gerard Monaco as Mario, Ethan Moorhouse as Messenger, Emma Monnickendam as Hermione, Jay Taylor as Marcus, Ellie Turner as Chloe and Joshua-Alexander Williams as Luke. The production also marks Lisa Spirling's directorial debut as Stratford East’s new artistic director.

When talking of her hopes for the show, Aikman said: "I'm not trying to say this play is going to change the world, but I think it will move people and it will make people laugh. It will make us look at certain aspects of our society, which I think is important."

And, at the end of the day, "it's funny, smart, sexy, interesting, and about an iconic woman – so what's not to like?"

Bloodsport: After Helen of Troy will run at London's Stratford East theatre until 10 October 2026.

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