As British icon Lipman stars in Holocaust play, she fears anti-Semitism is on the rise

SHE may be dividing her time between the cobbles of Coronation Street and treading the boards in a powerful play about a Holocaust survivor...but actress Dame Maureen Lipman says she has some tricks to dealing with stress of life.

- Julia Kuttner

When she takes time away from the iconic ITV soap or rehearsing her one-woman show, Dame Maureen relaxes by gardening and blasting out Louis Armstrong's What A Wonderful World.

Her role as "proper battleaxe" Evelyn Plummer in Corrie couldn't be more different from her latest theatrical release playing Rose, who escapes Nazi-occupied Europe to start afresh in America.

Maureen explains: "Rose is the story of a woman who kicks the **** out of life. She says, if I'm lucky enough to live I'm going to live to the hilt, and I'm going to do the right thing by the people I love."

Written by Martin Sherman, it was first performed on Broadway and in London in 1999.