Extra Steps

I WAS expecting to have to chat with David Michaels direct from the gym as he built up his muscles to play lantern-jawed old-style hero Richard Hannay, of The 39 Steps fame, particularly as he has to shimmy down a rope from balcony to stage at one point.

"Fortunately I knew I was doing the role and went to the gym beforehand, but I haven't had time since. It is pretty physical, I've kind of mastered the rope climb but I've still got a bit of a way to go.

It doesn't seem that high, but when you're up there it's high enough and I've got to look like Harrison Ford," he replies.

He had seen the award-winning spoof version of the famous John Buchan book in the West End before agreeing to take on the tour which includes York and Newcastle.

"It's a non-stop show for everybody, if they're not on stage they'll be running around backstage," he says of the alleged 139 roles taken on by just four actors.

"I do all my running on stage plus using ladders and hanging from beams, so there's a full panoply of activities in this play," he explains.

Does Michaels have a job keeping a straight face with so much role-swapping involving the three other cast members, Clare Swinburne, Alan Perrin and Colin Mace He says: "Colin and Alan have to work really hard to make the character changes as slick as they can be. You can't be off by a half a beat otherwise the whole scene can fall apart.

"There was more laughing in rehearsals, but because we have to play it straight it doesn't seem to be much of a problem. The idea is there we are four actors in a company putting on The 39 Steps, so the idea is that we've got huge integrity as we attempt to put on our' version of the Alfred Hitchcock film."

When Michaels tells people about the play the normal reaction is that it's a favourite film.

"We then say that we're doing the film version on stage, but it's a comedy and they go it's a thriller' and we reply yeah, I know'. The essence is of the film with a backward glance at the 30s and 40s period," explains the actor about a project which actually started life back in 1996 in North Yorkshire when Nobby Dimon and Simon Corble wrote the first spoof version.

SINCE then, London's Tricycle Theatre and scriptwriter Patrick Barlow helped to switch the play to the West End and a Best New Comedy award from the Oliviers.

"I was at drama school with Simon Corble and I hoping to get in touch with him so he can come and see us at the Salford Lowry," he says, adding that his nine-year-old son, Ralph, is also on the guest list.

"He and a friend are coming because I've told lots of parents that their children will be as entertained as them."

In one scene, Hannay has to run across the Scottish moors and Michaels jokes that he's quite used to that having kept up his fitness levels by jogging across the Yorkshire Moors while shooting Heartbeat for ITV, where he made quite an impact as Dr Neil Bolton in two series.

After a run as John Stokes in Channel five's Family Affairs, the Manchester-born actor switched to theatre in the last couple of years and couldn't resist the appeal of following Robert Donat into the role of Hannay.

"There are certain instances in the film that you don't forget, like the taking off of the stockings when the couple are handcuffed together. It's nothing like the book, because I've read it, and there's hardly any similarity between the film and the book.

Having seen the film I thought it would be absolutely brilliant to play Hannay because he's a loner, a bachelor, yet he is romantic and searching for something.

"He's at a midlife crisis at 37, which in those days means 47, because he's got no wife, no children, lives in a rented flat and has come back from Canada to friends that are either married, dead or away elsewhere. His life has got no meaning and then something with the biggest meaning you could possibly have falls into his lap,"

he says of a character who tells the audience he was contemplating suicide at one point before showing them why he's not.

"It's a fabulous journey and a real oneoff which makes it so exciting. This is more than a specially creative piece of theatre with so many people involved in its creation," Michaels adds.

Having switched from TV to theatre I can't help but ask him about the time when a broken leg came between him and super-stardom as a hairdresser in Coronation Street.

"I had been in Coronation Street for nine months, 1994-95, and then I went off to do a play at the West Yorkshire Playhouse and after that I did The Changing Room by David Storey for The Royal Court Theatre. I played football to try and keep fit because we had to look like rugby league players and I broke my leg on the Sunday before we opened," he says.

❛I'D filmed a scene as Jon Welch with Angela Griffin saying I was going to come back and buy the salon. So it all couldn't happen and I was indisposed for three weeks in hospital after breaking my leg in February 1996 and not being able to walk until I had various other operations.

It took almost a year to sort itself out,"

Michaels explains.

Amazingl,y he still turns out for the Old Rums actors/writers football team at Chalk Farm, London.

"But I never play if I'm working or going up for big jobs," he laughs.

■ The 39 Steps plays York's Theatre Royal from Tuesday until Saturday. Tickets: £10- £19. Box Office: 01904-623568 www.yorktheatreroyal.co.uk ■ Newcastle Theatre Royal, April 7-12.

Tickets: £7.50-£23. Box Office: 08448-112121 www.theatreroyal.co.uk