Working with the director Mike Leigh gave actor John Kirk just the inspiration he needed for Abigail's Party, as he tells CHARLES HUTCHINSON.

JOHN Kirk knows how to work in the devised Mike Leigh style.

This experience has come in handy for the York Theatre Royal revival of Leigh's landmark play from the late 1970s, Abigail's Party, in which John will play monosyllabic party guest Tony from tonight.

"I briefly worked with Mike Leigh on Career Girls in 1997. There were three of us that were supposed to be with him for a week but it ended up being a day, just doing fill-in characters," John recalls.

"What he does is give you information individually so that your story doesn't affect anyone else's train of thought. You go away, you come back, and he'll ask you what you've come up with. You go away again, come back and then do a very short scene!"

For the Theatre Royal production, he is working under director Marcus Romer, artistic director of Pilot Theatre. "We started rehearsals with improvisations with Marcus, where we filled in the blanks in each character's story. Acting is about asking questions and filling in answers, which helps to build what you see on stage in the end," John says.

"What you do is come up with a shared history and that helps two actors playing man and wife to come to a joint way of thinking. A lot of actors don't like it. A lot of directors don't like it. And a lot of writers don't like it. But I do like it, and you know with this play that the original company went through the same process.

"By working with a group, you have a shared starting point and a shared goal, and because this can be such a solitary job, more so in TV or film work, working with people is 'lovely', as they would say in Abigail's Party."

John is not influenced by past performances of a role. "It would be very weak to be affected by how someone else played it. There are as many systems of working as there are actors , but I tend to use the same methodology as Mike Leigh, approaching a role from the character's point of view and how that character fits in," he says.

"With Mike Leigh's work, you have the challenge of them being characters or caricatures in your performance, and you have to work out how to make them characters, not caricatures."

The reward comes in the audience laughter. "Tony, the monosyllabic ex-footballer, is known as being something of a show stealer in Abigail's Party because he's so quiet, and all he says is 'Yeah' or 'Ta'," says John.

"You have to say they're all awful people in Abigail's Party, not because they're killers but because of what they want and how they go about getting it. As a kid growing up in the Seventies, I remember it was the first time things like lava lamps appeared as symbols of your status, not as ornaments, and that's what this play is about.

"The people in Abigail's Party are completely narrow minded and self-centred and never listen to anything anyone says."

Thankfully the same could not be said of the cast in rehearsals!

Abigail's Party, York Theatre Royal, until July 23. Box office: 01904 623568.

Updated: 09:12 Friday, July 08, 2005