An actor's life for me

I've just joined the cast of Michael Frayn's award-winning play Democracy, for its transfer from the National Theatre to a season at Wyndhams Theatre in the West End. As with most acting jobs, it appeared unexpectedly out of nowhere while I was looking in the other direction, and the contrast with my last gig could scarcely be greater. Eight weeks ago I was still up to my Lycra-girt neck in Mamma Mia!, singing "Knowing Me Knowing You" to 1,700 ecstatic Abba fans each night, many of them in silver glitter wigs and platform boots.

From that to a tense new drama exploring the political career of the West German Chancellor Willy Brandt and his eventual downfall at the hands of his personal assistant Günter Guillaume is one of the more unpredictable leaps I've made in my career. Or to put it more graphically; my last lines on a stage were: "Waterloo, Whoa-oa-oa-oa Waterloo..." My next are: "Twelve years of Hitler, five years of military government, 20 years of conservatism and Cold War. And now a hope at last of ending the long stalemate in Europe..." I may complain about many aspects of the acting game, but being typecast isn't one of them.

My connection with Michael Frayn has been a chequered if affable one. A production of his play Clouds at the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough in the early Eighties forms one of the happiest memories of my early days in rep: I even recall that the celebrated author made the 200-mile journey up to see it, a rare event even then, and one that immediately qualified him for "top bloke" status in our tiny acting company.

A decade later, our paths crossed again, though in less auspicious circumstances, when I was involved in one of his few relative failures. His play Look Look, described by somebody as a three-dimensional version of another of his best-known plays, Noises Off, sunk with all hands at the Aldwych Theatre after receiving disappointing reviews, and Frayn's honest and sensitive memoir of those few fraught weeks in a subsequent newspaper article provided the clearest possible insight into the delicate and intangible process of trying to write a successful play.

Since then his touch has rarely deserted him, and Democracy has already won a string of awards and huge critical acclaim during its initial run on the South Bank. Now it makes the leap over the river to Wyndhams Theatre, and it's a pleasure to be on board for the next leg of its journey. None the less, taking over in a production that is already up and running brings its own problems. Beginning any job is always an anxious time for an actor, but at least you can huddle together for warmth with your new comrades. Not so when they've already been doing it for six months. The present cast, with the exception of me and one other new actor in the playground, have already clocked up about 100 performances in the Cottesloe and Lyttelton auditoria, and have coalesced and melded to the point where their collective performance moves through the two and a half hours of stage time with extraordinary pace, skill and dexterity.

Trying to assimilate oneself into this piece of precision theatrical machinery is the acting equivalent of trying to board a rapidly moving train. Apart from hooking your umbrella handle on to the door of the guard's van and clinging on for grim death, there's not much you can do, at least to begin with. But I've done a few takeovers in my time, none more scary than the part of Billy Flynn in Chicago after a mere nine afternoons of rehearsal. (I can never recall the experience without being reminded of the ad lib from a struggling stand-up comedian: "There's something running down my leg; I hope it's sweat...") Hopefully, I've picked up a few tips along the way that will stand me in good stead.

The first rule of thumb for a takeover is never to ask why your predecessor has vacated the role. Usually it will be for perfectly honourable reasons - they've got another job offer, or feel they've done as much as they can with the part - but if it's because they've realised the part is a stinker with not one good line in the entire evening, you don't really want to know. Not once you've signed the contract. And in any case you'll find out for yourself soon enough.

The second golden rule is: don't try too hard in rehearsals. Actors are generally a friendly and accommodating lot, but however welcoming they are, it's best to remember that you are joining a tightly knit group of individuals who have already spent many months together. Most of their rehearsal-room conversation will inevitably be about incidents and references known only to them, and trying too hard to join in their banter round the tea urn will only mark you out as a prat.

It's also as well to remember that however genuine the smiles of greeting and firm the handshakes at your initial meeting, they would all rather be shot than be traipsing in at 10am to re-rehearse something most of them can do in their sleep. "Learn your lines and don't bump into the furniture" may seem a hackneyed theatrical maxim, but for a takeover it's a good way of earning Brownie points with the old lags during the long hours of re-rehearsal.

You should also avoid the temptation of suggesting radical new interpretations of your scenes together. The regulars may profess themselves perfectly happy to investigate the drama afresh, but start wading in with ideas that jeopardise their best moments, ones that they've taken months to come up with and that have won them glowing reviews, and you'll soon find their amiable smiles freezing into rictus grins of barely disguised hostility.

Democracy throws up particular challenges for the takeover. It's a complex, beautifully crafted piece of writing in which real-time action is interwoven with symbolic narrative. The part I'm playing, the shadowy East German Stasi go-between Arno Kretschmann, is on stage for virtually the entire two and a half hours of the play, but with long interludes in which he hardly speaks. Learning your lines is one thing, but knowing when to speak them is an entirely separate problem and can't be learnt outside the rehearsal room. For much of the time I stuck to a policy of "if nobody's speaking, then it must be me", and apart from the odd occasion on which I inadvertently cut several pages of the play, it served me well.

Luckily, the Democracy lot are a good crowd. The only other new kid on the block, Simon Chandler, is an old friend of mine from a production of Noël Coward's sprawling epic Cavalcade, in which we were both involved at Chichester Festival Theatre in the mid-Eighties, along with a cast of 25 other professionals, 150 amateurs and the Bosham town brass band. Another of the present cast, Glyn Grain, turned out to be an old boy from my secondary school (a few heartily sung bars of the school song, "Absque Labore Nihil", seemed to clear the rehearsal room quicker than any fire alarm), and Roger Allam, who plays Willy Brandt, recently featured with me in an episode of the ITV drama Foyle's War. So after four long but enjoyable weeks I'm beginning to feel part of the gang.

There's a speech of mine in the play that describes the feverish mood inside the West German Federal Chancellery in the late Sixties. "All looking round at every moment to see the expression on everyone else's faces. All trying to guess which way everyone else will jump. All out of themselves, and all totally dependent on everyone else." It could just as well describe the life of the takeover. At least until I've got a couple of performances under my belt.

'Democracy', Wyndhams Theatre, London WC2 (020-7369 1736), booking until October