Former soap star Bill Ward may be best known as Coronation Street's love-rat builder Charlie Stubbs – but next week he will be taking on a very different role as the lead in Look Back In Anger.
The star is set to play the original 'angry young man' Jimmy Porter in a new production of the 1956 play, which comes to the Theatre Royal, in Bury St Edmunds, on Tuesday.
"It's one of the great plays of British theatre," said the 42-year-old.
"At the time it was written, it was revolutionary – it totally changed the face of British theatre.
"It put the present on stage and nobody had seen anything like it before."
Written by John Osborne, the story centres on a disillusioned graduate who has left university to find there are no jobs for him – and Ward said he thought today's audiences could sympathise with much of the subject matter.
"It was written following the Second World War when people had very little money and, although the recession hasn't quite mirrored those years yet, it's fast heading in that direction," he said.
He added that he was happy to be back on stage after a number of TV acting jobs – including Coronation Street, where he said he had to learn to work at a vastly different pace to theatre.
"I love telly and theatre, and they're both different – with a piece of work like this, you get five or six weeks to rehearse, whereas on Corrie you shoot 10 or 15 scenes a day," he said.
"Jimmy Porter doesn't stop talking – there are a lot of lines to learn, but he's an incredibly intelligent young man and he has complicated ideas, so you have to understand those as well.
"I've really enjoyed getting to grips with him."
- Look Back In Anger runs from Tuesday to Friday at the Theatre Royal, with tickets available on 01284 769505.Click here to go back to our main news index. 