Dominic North has played a leading role for seven years. He talks to Steve Pratt about getting parts and taking to the road

YORKSHIRE-born dancer Dominic North is back in the driving seat when popular dance theatre company New Adventures brings The Car Man back to Newcastle Theatre Royal at the end of this month (April).

It was the second show he did with the contemporary dance/theatre touring company led by artistic director Matthew Bourne, whose male Swan Lake has become a piece of British theatre history.

North had been with the company three years when The Car Man first went on the road to theatres around the country. First staged in 2000, the production loosely based on Bizet’s popular opera features leading characters who are among the most challenging both physically and emotionally created by Bourne.

“The Car Man was the second show I did with the company. I played a couple of roles. Now I’m playing leading roles and am a staging assistant helping put on the shows and teaching,” he says.

“This is the way it’s worked for me. We do have regular cast members and people are not right for every show or every role. I’ve been very lucky because since 2008 I’ve been a principal in every show I’ve done.”

North, now one of New Adventures most popular leading men, is playing the “quite deep, intense” role of Angelo, sharing the part with rising company star Liam Mower (a former London West End Billy Elliot) on the tour. They’ve been receiving rave reviews for their moving performances as the title character of New Adventures’ production Edward Scissorhands.

Others in the cast include Jonathan Ollivier and Chris Trenfield sharing the title role of Luca, The Car Man, after enjoying success recently as The Swan in Bourne’s Swan Lake. Ashley Shaw and Zizi Strallen dance the role of Lana, Katy Lowenhoff and Kate Lyons dance the part of Lana’s older sister Rita.

Leeds-born North began dancing through his twin sister. She attended dance classes and he was taken along by his parents when they picked her up from class. “I said I wanted to go to dance class,” he recalls. “But they said, ‘you love rugby, athletics, football – there’s not enough nights in the week to do dance too’. But I went a couple of times and began taking it more seriously.”

He admits he was “very lucky” to join New Adventures not long after finishing his training at the Central School of Ballet and doing “a couple of other jobs and bibs and bobs”. When a company member dropped out of Swan Lake and they “needed a medium swan”, 5ft 10in North was the ideal candidate. He was also aware of Bourne’s work, having studied Swan Lake at A-levels for two years. “So I kind of knew the show and people I had seen on the DVD were in the cast helping tour the show,” he recalls.

For the first four years with New Adventures he performed in a variety of their stage work, loving both the shows and the acting side of things. He also developed a great relationship with Bourne, “both as my boss and my friend”.

Edward Scissorhands was his first major role seven years ago. He played the metal-fingered oddball at Sydney Opera House, also putting on the metal and fibreglass scissor hands on tour in the UK, Paris, Antwerp and Athens. Edward’s look and those hands provide extra difficulties for a performer. “You’re not really trained to dance like that in a restricting suit and the hands and all the physicality the part demands. You can’t walk normally or run really,” he says.

Now there’s only a couple of shows in the New Adventures repertoire in which he hasn’t appeared – Play Without Words and Highland Fling.

Touring doesn’t worry him. He’s quite good at it, he thinks. “I understand it’s not right for everybody but I have a good way of doing it and am used to it. I make sure I get good digs and that makes it all worthwhile. I like touring. If I’m in the same place for a couple of months I want to get away,” he says.

He’s been all over the world with New Adventures since his first overseas tour of four months in Asia. He came back “in love” with Tokyo and Australia. Before rehearsals for The Car Man, he was in the US, performing in Swan Lake in New York.

When he’s not having New Adventures, North is part of a Morris dancing parody act called the Bo Diddlers. “Basically it’s just a laugh with our friends,” he explains “We’ve done a couple of parties and a few events. It’s taken off and we had a bit of funding from the Arts Council. We tend to do it in our down months off from New Adventures. Last year we did a little tour and this year are hoping to do something over the summer.”

n The Car Man: Newcastle Theatre Royal, April 29 to May 9. Box Office: 08448-112121 and theatreroyal.co.uk