JOHN Doyle bade farewell to his four-year tenure as artistic director of York Theatre Royal with Into The Woods, one of his actor-musician productions that have come to define his career.

Next week, the Theatre Royal will play host to a Doyle show for the first time since 1997. Once more his cast will be kept doubly busy, singing and performing instruments in Pinafore Swing, his cheeky swing adaptation of Gilbert & Sullivan's operetta HMS Pinafore for The Watermill, West Berkshire Playhouse.

The Scotsman turned freelance on leaving York, and has garnered awards aplenty for his distinctive work with his music-theatre ensembles.

"I started doing these productions at the Liverpool Everyman, carried them on at York once a year, and since going freelance I've done them most of the time," he says. "It was kind of a career choice to be known for one thing in particular.

"I've always loved musical theatre but never the two-dimensional Broadway versions. The actor-musician productions have the human aspect because they're very much all hands on deck."

John first won a TMA Best Musical Award for his Theatre Royal production of Moll Flanders in 1995, and his 2001 jazz reinvention of Gilbert & Sullivan's The Gondoliers and 2002 production of Fiddler On The Roof for the Watermill brought him the honour twice more.

"What's nice is that it's being recognised as a form of theatre in its own right. Rock'n'roll musicals have always been recognised but our achievement has been to take musical theatre into a wide range of storytelling - and it's all been done out of necessity, with the need to keep production costs down."

London's West End is finally catching on to this form of theatre through Doyle's production of Sweeney Todd, now running at the New Ambassadors with the cast cutting an arresting sight in white coats streaked in blood.

"It's been very interesting to see London's reaction, as if actor-musician shows were something new, when in reality we've been doing them for years," John says.

The latest addition to the Doyle portfolio, Pinafore Swing, gets the G&S joint jumping in a 1940s-style production.

As with The Gondoliers in 2001, the show retains all of Gilbert's original tunes and "quite a lot" of Sullivan's words, but re-orchestrates them into swing arrangements, played and performed by the company's actor-musicians.

As for the storyline, please board P4 for a voyage of love, in which American sailor Jack is in love with the Wren, Jenny, but her father, the Captain, would rather she married Joe Porter, the aristocratic Commanding Officer.

Nothing new so far but Doyle's adaptation then throws into the mix his answer to the Andrews Sisters, the Butterfly Sisters, Bee-Bee, Dee-Dee and Hee-Bee, plus Jim, a happy-go-lucky Cockney sailor and a case of confused identities.

"Pinafore Swing grew out of the success of The Gondoliers: at the Watermill: we thought what can we do that's fun and light? If people know their G&S they'll get the references, and if they don't they will still get a fun night out of the show anyway," John says.

"In G&S operettas the story is always the same but in Pinafore Swing there's more of a story and more humanity, whereas often I think G&S is too two-dimensional and you don't care about the characters. Here you will."

Doyle's production typifies his belief in making well-known theatre pieces resonate with meaning for modern audiences. "If theatre remains in aspic, whatever the material - it's the same for Gilbert & Sullivan as Shakespeare -if you don't make connections with now, then what's the point?" he asks.

"We're setting this production in the Second World War - young audiences will have enough references from seeing movies or reading about it, and they'll identify with the obsession with being British, and the importance of patriotism, and they'll note how the story touches on how American we've become."

The changes are not too radical. "Young audiences don't know about G&S but in fairness to Sullivan, he wrote fab tunes and melodies, and although they're now being sung by a swing band the tunes are still there.

"The lyrics still have Gilbert's rhythms, though I've almost entirely re-written them, but as Charlie Spencer's review in the Daily Telegraph said, it's all done with love and affection. It's not aiming to be cutting edge but really pleasing and warm and affectionate, which so much swing music is," John says.

"Look at musicians such as Robbie Williams and Jamie Cullum; they're using Forties music and reinventing it, and we're reinventing Gilbert & Sullivan."

Pinafore Swing, York Theatre Royal, October 19 to 23, 7.30pm plus 2pm, Thursday, 2.30pm, Saturday. Tickets: £3.50 to £17.50 on 01904 623568.

Updated: 16:19 Thursday, October 14, 2004