YASMINA Reza's play Art asks are you who you think you are or who your friends think you are.

Not without irony, this question is even more complex for actors, who are forever shedding skins and adopting new characters.

Andrew Dunn takes such thoughts in his stride as he prepares to play the cynical Marc at York Theatre Royal from tonight. The Dinnerladies and 55 Degrees North regular is not one to wrap himself in the constrictions of method acting, and when Damian Cruden suggests the North Easterner looks uncannily French for his role in a Parisian drama, Andrew smiles and shrugs his shoulders, as if to emphasise the point.

What drew him to Reza's global hit, winner of the Evening Standard Award for Best Comedy of the Year in 1994 in its British debut with Albert Finney, Tom Courtenay and Ken Stott?

"I'd never seen it, but for me, when I read the play what struck me was the fact it was so vibrant and alive throughout the piece," says Andrew.

"You read many scripts where you get confused or lost by the end of it, but Art is tremendously well written. It's also so compact and all the characters have good things and bad things about them, which makes it interesting."

At the centre of Art is a canvas about five feet by four feet: white foreground, white background, white all over, with white stripes. Dunn's Marc cannot believe his Parisian friend of 15 years, Serge (Stuart Organ), has bought this white expanse at vast expense, resolute in his belief that it is a masterpiece.

Marc thinks this verdict is a joke; fellow friend Yvan (Daniel Hill) wonders how you can see the stripes. Suddenly, after years of friendship running on established tramlines, the painting sends it off course.

"They're meant to be the best of friends for all that time and yet it turns nasty. What the presence of art' has done is to allow them to say to friends things you couldn't normally say. It's brought those feelings to the surface," says Andrew.

"Marc comes from a background of believing you should be able to see the craft in art. He can appreciate skill in art, but he can't see any skill in the piece bought by Serge - he says a painter and decorator could have done it!"

Andrew stresses, however, that the central focus of Art is relationships and not art. "They all learn something about themselves and each other. For Marc, he has had 15 years as the dominant character, so he has to learn the truth of what the other two really see in him, and that must hurt him as he has to take it on board to become socially aware of who he is," he says.

"Marc has an easier position at the start, simply appreciating old things but, by the end, he has totally changed his stance; by then he is looking at a piece of art for his own reaction, not a preconceived one."

The accents maybe English, not least on account of Damian Cruden's production using Christopher Hampton's adaptation, but the characters remain irrefutably French. "It's set in Paris, where there's snobbery between Parisians and non-Parisians. Serge looks down on Marc because he's from Carcassone, while Serge is definitely Parisian; Marc has spent his adult life trying to be what they are in Paris and so he comes across as a bully," says Andrew.

"What we've tried to do in rehearsals is work out why they are friends; how did they meet, what keeps them together when they're all from different backgrounds?"

Another French flavour marks the piece too.

"These three friends regularly meet up to talk about personal things, but in England, when you meet up, you go out for a drink, you talk about football and about who you fancy, but never about personal things."

One exception to that behavioural tendency would be Andrew's last performance at York Theatre Royal, playing Phil, the troubled, clowning son of brass band leader Danny in Brassed Off, Mark Herman's tragicomic portrait of a Yorkshire pit community facing shutdown.

Andrew, who lives in York, has fond memories of Damian Cruden's production at his local repertory theatre in September 2004.

"It was a fantastic experience and I'd love to do it again. You can't but enjoy doing something like that: the sadness of the story but the joy the production gave people of York, and especially people who weren't regular theatregoers," he says. "I still get stopped in the supermarket by people saying how much they loved that show."

Whether Brassed Off will be revived at the Theatre Royal we must wait and see, but you will not be seeing more of Andrew in the role of Sergeant Rick Astel in BBC1's North eastern cop drama 55 Degrees North.

"It's finished," he says with another of his smiling shrugs.

Art runs at York Theatre Royal until November 11. Tickets: £4 to £18 on 01904 623568.