Wendy Craig was doing her holiday washing when I rang. The Sacriston-born actress, who's returning to her native North-East with the Royal Shakespeare Company, has just returned from a week in Crete. Far from a having a nice time wish-you-were-here sort of break, she confessed the trip had been a "total disaster".

"I had two wonderful days of sunshine and then the weather changed. I never saw the sun again, it rained for the rest of the time. It was windy and it was cold," she says.

"There were two people from Darlington that I met and we spent most of the week laughing at our predicament."

Craig herself laughs as she recalls the holiday. Now she's packing her bags again and heading for the RSC's Newcastle season to play Mrs Malaprop, the woman who mixes up her words, in Sheridan's classic comedy The Rivals.

Her RSC debut at 66, already seen at the company's Stratford-upon-Avon base, has proved something of a triumph for the actress best known by the public for playing housewives and mothers in TV series such as Not In Front Of The Children, And Mother Makes Three and Butterflies.

The critics have been very enthusiastic about her Mrs M - not that she's cast her eyes over them. "I don't read reviews because I'm such a worrier," she says.

"If they were bad I would be afraid to go on and if they were good I would be scared to repeat that performance. I think it's best I just do my best and hope for the best. Perhaps in a couple of years I might look at them."

Word has reached her, however, about the praise for her performance - "and I'm very thankful".

Apart from pantomime, she has done little theatre in recent years in contrast to her early years as an actress when she was part of the English Stage Company at London's Royal Court Theatre. In the 1960s she appeared in British films like The Servant with Dirk Bogarde. But those successes tended to get forgotten, at least by those who seem to think unless an actor is on the box they're either dead or unemployed.

Then last year she appeared in a revival of Noel Coward's Easy Virtue at Chichester Festival Theatre directed by Maria Aitken. "I was doing very little theatre work and a friend in panto with me said I should be doing more. She showed me what they were casting for at Chichester. I read the play and thought, 'I could play the mother'. She was a real gorgon. So I wrote to Maria Aitken and asked if she would consider me for that role. She wrote back saying that funnily enough I was on their short list."

During the Chichester run, Craig's agent took the RSC casting people to see the production and as a result Mrs Malaprop came her way.

"I was in panto in Rhyl when my agent rang to say the RSC were interested in me playing it. I was simply terrified. I thought I couldn't possibly do that, that it was beyond me. She said I wouldn't get another chance and really ought to take it," she recalls.

Craig didn't have long to worry about what she'd let herself in for as rehearsals began immediately the panto run ended. "Believe me, I was absolutely terrified because I've always held the RSC in great esteem, and rightly so, because they are a wonderful company. I was nervous and anxious I wouldn't be up to their standard."

The ghosts of other Mrs Malaprops didn't weigh too heavily on her. "When I read her I knew how I wanted to play her," she says. "I have only seen the role done once before with Patricia Routledge and she's a very different kind of actress."

The experience has left her wanting to do more of the classics, something she feels she may have neglected in her career. At least the high profile of an RSC appearance has made people in the business aware that she can do such parts.

Thanks to cable and satellite channels, her TV sitcoms can still be seen. Butterflies even earned a rerun on terrestrial BBC and she's about to revive the character of dissatisfied housewife Ria for one night only. A special edition of Carla Lane's comedy is being produced with the original cast for this year's Children In Need night.

"It's about what's happening 21 years on. I got the script today but I'm not going to tell you what's in it. But when I read the script it was as if I had never been away," she says.

Although the RSC season means she's returning to the part of the country where she grew up, the heavy schedule of rehearsals, performances and public engagements means she won't have time to revisit old haunts during her stay in Newcastle.

And as The Rivals is transferring to London's Barbican Theatre until April, she'll not be playing Fairy Godmother in panto this Christmas. "I will miss it because I really love doing the part but as Mrs Malaprop I'm all dressed up in this mad wig and frock so it's a bit like being an Ugly Sister," she says.

l The Rivals is at Newcastle Playhouse from October 30 to November 4. Box office 0191-232 2061.