“We’ve all fallen for an Odysseus at some point, haven’t we?” says Amelia Bullmore. The 62-year-old actor – last seen swinging an electric guitar in Sally Wainwright’s – grins and shakes a head of spiky white hair. “You can bet Odysseus was a cracking raconteur. Great company, up all night with a goblet of wine, giving it: ‘Did I tell you the one about the cyclops…?’”

She’s right. While the Homeric hero’s having his macho moment on the big screen – courtesy of Christopher Nolan’s epic ambition, Matt Damon’s salty beard and a £250m budget – Bullmore will be starring as Odysseus’s “patient, faithful” wife Penelope in York Theatre Royal’s wittily subversive new production of Margaret Atwood’s .

“It’s great that the film has done some of the work for us, and people will have those spectacular images in their heads,” she says. “But this will be a much more intimate experience. It’ll feel like she’s just walked out of the IMAX and stepped onto a more intimate stage to say: ‘That’s the official version. What happened to me went more like this…’”

Atwood first wrote her revisionist feminist take on the story as a novella back in 2005, turning it into a play in 2007. Interviewed that same year, The Handmaid’s Tale author felt Penelope’s experience of holding the fort while Odysseus makes his meandering way home from work in Troy was shared by “every wife waiting for her husband to come home from Los Angeles”. His excuses are outlandish, although escaping from a cyclops and being captive by a besotted nymph at least boast more originality than the standard “working late”.

Homer’s Penelope is shorter, plainer and more dutiful than her cousin, Helen (whom Odysseus wanted to marry before settling for her). Clever, too. Like her husband she spins yarns to survive, using her guile to fend off the hordes of invading “suitors” (gold diggers who want Ithacan land and power, not its queen). Required to keep face to keep her head, she may have a few secrets.

Amelia Bullmore rehearsing for ‘The Penelopiad’ (Photo: Pamela Raith)

“But in the play she’s talking to us, like an MC, from Hades,” says Bullmore. Now dead, she no longer needs to maintain the Bronze Age trad-wife facade. “She’s on a mission to set the record straight. Penelope was actually very wily and very active during the time we’ve been told she was patient.”

Talking via video call from a drafty rehearsal room, Bullmore’s spending the day alone working with director Julia Forster. But soon they’ll be sharing the space with the full cast – “there will be masks and puppets and tap dancing”.

The other actors will be playing the parts of Penelope’s 12 enslaved maids. According to Homer, these women behaved with “wantonness” around the suitors. On his return, Odysseus orders his son Telemachus to kill them and Telemachus condemns them as “sluts” and “whores” before hanging them.

“While Odysseus is away, lonely, resourceful Penelope has had a delicious time with the maids,” says Bullmore. “She’s under the impression it’s ‘all girls together’ and treats it like a pyjama party. But for the maids, it’s obviously much more dangerous and ends in disaster.”

She points out that Penelope was born into wealth and privilege – her mother is a naiad, so she’s half divine, “whereas the maids have no agency, no control over their bodies”: “In the play they’re very sharp and funny about that. They can finally upstage – even bully – Penelope, who cannot fully visit her part in their destruction. But they point out her blind spots, reveal how fragile the sisterhood is.”

Bullmore has spent her career investigating and celebrating sisterhood. Born in Chelsea, London in 1964, she’s the daughter of an advertising executive and a gardening writer whom she describes as “enthusiastic about each other, about their children, about everything they did”. A gifted natural mimic – “I did impersonations of all my mum’s friends as well as people off the telly” – she grew up in thrall to stories, reading a series called Folk Tales from around the World with her two older brothers and revelling in Astrid Lindgren’s 1940s Pippi Longstocking books: “I loved her astonishing independence”.

After studying drama at Manchester University, she formed a cabaret duo called Red Stockings (a cheery swipe at the dismissal of educated women as “blue stockings”) before landing the part of fiery Steph Barnes in in 1990. The soap showcased a brinkswoman’s flair for comic timing, and in the late 1990s she had a hoot larking about on BBC sketch show – a playground for the likes of Olivia Colman, Simon Pegg, Catherine Tate, Sally Phillips, David Mitchell and Robert Webb.

She was hilarious as Alan Partridge’s “bloody superb” Ukrainian girlfriend Sonja in before going on to appear in groundbreaking female-led police procedural (2011-2014) as the boss of heroines played by Lesley Sharp and Suranne Jones. Although the show was originally written by Sally Wainwright, Bullmore went on to write seven episodes of the show herself and became part of the Wainwright stable, playing a murdered mistress in before being cast in Riot Women.

Her 2013 play, Di and Viv and Rose, based on the evolution of her own close female friendships, transferred to the West End in 2015. “I loved sharing a flat with my friends in my twenties,” she says. She now lives happily with her husband of more than 30 years, actor Paul Higgins, with whom she shares two daughters. But should he predecease her, she says she’s on board with the trend of older women cohabiting in later life.

“I’d be more than game for doing that in my 70s and 80s,” she says. “My friendships with other women have deepened over the years. I value the shared knowledge we’ve built up over the decades. Our history, our humour…” She sighs. “I was looking at a friend the other day and noticing how comforting, how life-improving, I find the shape of her. Her silhouette – as she arrives and sits down – is so unmistakable.”

Bullmore says that working on means she has come to see Margaret Atwood – still writing fiction tackling hot topics of the day – as one of the coolest octogenarian women on the planet. “It’s just incredible, the way she makes Bronze Age thinking so immediate. All these Gods and monsters become fodder for gossip.” She shakes her head in awe. “And did you see that picture she posted of herself over the summer? The one where she’s fixing her back steps with a crowbar? Absolutely brilliant.”

When nudged, Bullmore will admit she’s had her own impact on older women. – for which she learned to play the electric guitar from scratch – has inspired hundreds of women to pick up instruments and make music with friends. “The impact has been huge,” she nods. “A woman came round to fit some blinds for me the other day and said she was going to a drum lesson immediately afterwards as a result of having watched the show.”

Bullmore’s packing her guitar to take to York with her. “I knew it would be stupid to let the skill slide,” she tells me. “Lucky I didn’t. Because the are coming back for a second act.”

is on at the York Theatre Royal from 10-31 October (yorktheatreroyal.co.uk)