JONATHAN Race can draw on the experience of playing Ratty in The Wind In The Willows last summer when York Theatre Royal’s In The Round ensemble season opens tomorrow.

Artistic director Damian Cruden experimented with a circular configuration for the main house, building the set over the stalls with a bank of seating where the stage would normally be to complement the dress circle, and upper circle.

The show’s artistic success led to Cruden giving over a full season to in-the-round productions that begin with Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, in which Jonathan will play Rev Hale before going on to appear in three more ensemble company shows.

“I hadn’t done any in-the-round theatre before Wind In The Willows,” he says. “That wasn’t a problem in itself, but being in the round you’re challenged vocally, and in terms of other challenges – music, costume and the theatre design – you just had to embrace it. And coming out of a trapdoor is always fun.”

Unlike the purpose-built in-the-round design at the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough, the Theatre Royal version adapts an existing framework with its three tiers of seating.

“First of all you have the height issue, and the main problem when you’re facing upstage is that the sound can get swallowed, so you have to do a lot of speaking ‘out of your back’,” says Jonathan.

“You call on your training and technique, but it’s also about being more aware of the audience around you: being aware of what you have to do, so your muscle memory takes over and you’re ‘unconsciously competent’, leaving you to concentrate on what you’re saying, rather than how you’re saying it.”

Jonathan enjoyed last summer’s experience – just as he had savoured two summers of playing Peter in The Railway Children at the National Railway Museum – and he is looking forward to the season ahead.

“It was just a fantastic experience last year,” he says. “In the round may present you with a whole set of problems but also it gives you a whole set of freedoms as you’re not bound to do it one way.”

The heat on stage was taxing.

“We had a fan system set up in the dressing room and changes of costume for the second half because we were literally dripping – we never envy the wardrobe department here,” says Jonathan.

“It was incredibly hot, but there’s a sense of being energised when you’re warm, and I’d rather be too hot than too cold in a theatre, as there’s more chance of getting hurt when you’re cold.”

Jonathan has become a rep actor at the Theatre Royal over the past three years “almost by default, just by having done plays with Damian”. “We get on and work well together and he said, ‘We’re having this core company of 12 actors next season and one of the lines of characters would suit you; would you be interested?’. I said ‘Of course!’.

“Originally I was going to do May through to October, but now I’ll have the summer holidays off, which my two daughters are very happy about.”

He will follow up his role as Rev Hale by playing Larry in Gerald Durrell’s My Family And Other Animals, from June 3 to 25; King Richard in Anthony Minghella’s Two Planks And A Passion, from July 1 to 16; and Tempest, the role Alan Bennett played in his own play 40 Years On, from September 23 to October 15.

“To have four good plays in a year in one fell swoop was too good to turn down,” says Jonathan.

The Crucible opens the In The Round ensemble season at York Theatre Royal from tomorrow until May 28. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk