DINNER theatre is a new experience for Alasdair Harvey.

In essence, in Putting It Together, he sings Sondheim for your supper in the Harrogate Theatre Studio, performing alongside Rebecca Thornhill, Sophie Bould, Hadley Fraser and Mark Hilton. Musical director Nigel Lilley provides the piano music; Bower's Bistro serves a candle-lit dinner.

"I've never done Sondheim before and I've never done a musical revue before, though I did do a Fringe show of Brecht and Weill songs, Happy End, performing in a bar with people sitting around us."

Alasdair promises he can keep his mind off the roast rump of lamb in woodland mushroom jus and brandy-enriched Christmas pudding with hot punch sauce.

"We shall be worrying about other things!"

He is finding plenty of nourishment in Sondheim's caustic songs of broken romance, embittered marriages, acquisitive high society, cheating husbands and bored wives. "It's interesting because I've never really been a fan, but nor have I ever gone into it in such detail to not be a fan," says Alasdair. "But that thing of people saying how clever his lyrics are has been borne out. While I'm not a complete convert and I don't necessarily like all the songs, the lyrics are extremely clever.

"You need to study it in rehearsal to come to a full understanding of him, because I'm the kind of person who likes melodic music, so when he doesn't do that, you ask yourself, Why didn't he do that there? The more you hear the songs, the less they jar on you and you realise why he wrote the way he did."

Put together from Sondheim's diverse musicals, Putting It Together shows his songs in a new light and locates connecting themes in a revue set in the swish apartment of a wealthy sophisticate with marital problems and a roving eye (Alasdair's role).

"Taking a song out of its original context, you find that a song sung by a 60-year-old in the original musical still has poignancy when sung by a 30-year-old in a revue, where you carve the song to suit your show," he says.

For the past year, Alasdair has been playing newspaper editor Bruce Malcolm in The Bill, but he ends the year at Harrogate Theatre at short notice.

"I knew Nick Winston, the show's choreographer, and the day before they started rehearsals I got a call to say was I interested in replacing someone who had fallen ill?"

"The irony is I didn't want to be away at Christmas, so I'd already rejected the show, but then there was a kind of ironic poignancy in being asked to step in! That's one of the great things with being an actor: you never know what you'll be doing next!"

Putting It Together, Harrogate Theatre Studio, until January 2. Box office: 01423 502116.

Updated: 10:04 Friday, December 10, 2004