There's no respite for Rupert Frazer, who is on stage from start to finish during a new adaptation of David Copperfield. He tells Steve Pratt how he's been inspired by the great author to put pen to paper.

ACTOR Rupert Frazer was sitting in a corner doing his homework, reading Peter Ackroyd's biography of author Charles Dickens. He's playing David Copperfield in a stage version of the classic novel and, as this one is considered the writer's most autobiographical, he's searching for clues in his life story.

Former Glasgow Citizens Theatre boss Giles Havergal is directing his own adaptation, originally premiered at Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre five years ago.

Young Copperfield's adventures are seen through the eyes of the adult David (Frazer), and acted out by the young David (Mark Rice-Oxley).

"People have a great time when I say I'm playing David Copperfield, pointing out I'm in my fifties. I'm more or less that same age as Dickens when he died, which is quite spooky," says Frazer. "It can work because all of it comes out of my head, looking back to what happened all those years ago. It's such an extraordinary life, this boy's life."

Frazer, who spent two years working with Havergal's company at Glasgow Citz, read the book - all 850 pages - after being cast. "I found it incredibly accessible. There are some of Dickens' novels I find very hard-going," he says.

"A novel like this is teeming with characters which, sadly, we can't fit into one evening. Some characters have gone and will be missed by people who know the novel well.

"What's remarkable about the adaptation is that Giles has found a line that threads through the novel - David Copperfield's undisciplined heart that causes him to make mistakes."

Frazer is finding the experience new as he's never been on stage throughout a show, as happens in David Copperfield. "It's slightly alarming in that even Hamlet leaves the stage and can check what comes next," he says.

"I don't have that opportunity and the drama is something I have to exert a degree of authority over because it comes out of my head. I also have a direct relationship with the audience. That's something I'm genuinely looking forward to because I'm not that sort of actor who's had a lot of experience at that.

"I was trained to put up the fourth wall between the audience and the stage. This is very different and one of the reasons I wanted to do it. It's high time I did make that direct connection with the audience."

Havergal, one of the trio of artistic directors who helped Glasgow Citizens to international acclaim over a 30-year-old period, has had an enormous influence over Frazer's career. "I've only worked with him once since the Citz and that was 20 years ago, although I bump into him all the time," says the actor.

"An incredible shorthand exists between us, even after all these years, which goes to prove it really was an ensemble company that worked up there. We formed ways of working that didn't have to be written down."

When Frazer's first child was born, he had "to wake up and earn some money", so he moved into television and films. His long list of credits takes in everything from Hamlet and The Importance Of Being Earnest on stage to Foyle's War and Shackleton on TV.

By his own admission, he's worked mainly "in period stuff and wore a suit well". Now his three children have grown up, he's returning to the riskier, more radical work he did earlier in his career.

Frazer's whole career was a gamble as his background suggested a very different path. "I came of age in the Sixties and turned my back on my upbringing, which was military and public school," he says.

"When I started to earn, I was cast in those sort of parts. I was very fortunate, I'm not knocking it but the range was so much smaller.

"There was no way I was going into the Army like my father and his father. I had a tough time academically. My father was a scholar at Oxford and clearly I wasn't going to do that.

"Because those expectations were there, I relate to the struggle against them just as David Copperfield does. There's so much everyone can tap into.

"I remember that sense of dread and fear, and failing every exam I did. Theatre did present itself, even at Wellingborough, as a place of escape. It was one of the things I did where people said I was good. It offered itself as a possibility."

Frazer's family, as you might expect, dismissed the idea. He was packed off to work on a tobacco and maize farm in what was then Rhodesia. As soon as he returned home, he enrolled in drama school.

What's surprised him about David Copperfield is the supercharged emotions of the piece, akin to the feeling, he's told, that people get when they go to big musicals.

"David Copperfield is to do with pre-Freudian ways of unlocking all our childhoods. It should be very emotional, not just heart-wrenching but funny. That's what's happening in rehearsals - people are laughing and crying at the same time," he says.

Frazer has never appeared in Dickens before, never even been a particular fan of the author. The production has changed that. "I'd read half a dozen of his books, I guess. I do feel as though I've missed out. I'm definitely going to take him up now," he says.

Frazer has his own literary aspirations. He's written a novel, which he views as his apprenticeship. "I have a huge ambition to have something published," he says. "That ties in with David Copperfield, who has a wonderful moment when he gets one of his short stories published."

* David Copperfield runs at West Yorkshire Playhouse from April 29 to May 28. Tickets 0113 213 7700.