If there is one thing Miriam Margolyes can guarantee about her new show it's that there is certainly no nudity.

"It is a little bit rude though, because I'm a little bit rude," she laughs.

Margolyes may not be baring any flesh but her soul sure gets a workout in The Importance of Being Miriam - the 73-year-old's latest theatrical journey.

The outrageously witty British-Australian actress, perhaps best known for playing Professor Sprout in the Harry Potter films, inhabits over 20 characters in the show, from Lady Bracknell to Miss Prism, Romeo and Juliet's nurse to Juliet herself.

"I'm working hard out there and I'm making them laugh and I'm also making them cry," she says.

"I'm telling bits of my life, sharing quite private parts of my life too and I think people really enjoy that."

And for Margolyes, no show would be complete without a little Charles Dickens, whose work she describes as "a great box of delights".

Her love affair with the 19th century English writer was on full display in 2012 when Margolyes toured the world with her outstanding one-woman show Dickens' Women.

Critics praised the wit, power and pathos of her performance, which she says is a reflection of her passion for the literary great.

"He makes me laugh and he makes me cry, he creates some of the most fascinating, wicked, thrilling, funny characters that anyone ever did and his prose is matchless," Margolyes says.

"The way that he can say things just dazzles me, like Mrs Todgers from Martin Chuzzlewit is described as 'affection beaming in one eye and calculation out of the other', that sort of exactness in description is thrilling.

"I just don't think anyone has ever written a patch on him, he's the best there ever was, he's my man."

Margolyes, who now lives near Robertson in luxury tree-house Yarrawa Hill, which is also a holiday home, has dedicated the new show to her beloved mother, Ruth.

"She was the formative influence on my life, she always believed in me even at the beginning when times were hard and I wasn't doing very well.

"She gave me confidence, she taught me how to live, she cooked for me and gave me an understanding and an appreciation of the arts, she was a complete human being.

"Her memory is completely cherished and adored and I thought as I go towards the end of my life I ought to honour her in some way, and she didn't live long enough to see me be really successful, she never knew that I got the OBE, she didn't see the fruits of her labours so I wanted to dedicate a bit of fruit to her."

Margolyes is the first to admit her mother would probably be shocked by some of the "rude bits" of the show.

"My mother wasn't rude, she was always very much a lady, she wanted me to behave myself and I've never behaved myself, so in some ways I'm not at all the daughter she would have wanted, so mum, this is me, you'll have to make do."