ELLY Brewer and Sandi Toksvig could not have been more delighted when Paul Clayton said he wanted to direct The Pocket Dream, their comic twist on A Midsummer Night's Dream, at York Theatre Royal.

"Paul is an old friend of mine," says Elly. "I met him, I think, through Sandi 100 years ago. He was up in York last year to do When We Are Married and so I came to see it - I love York, the theatre, which is so charming, and the shops... especially Lakeland.

"A few months later Paul said to me 'Oh, it looks like they want to do The Pocket Dream at York'. He had been asked to put up a few suggestions for a play for him to direct, and they liked that one, which is great because it's a camp play and he's a great director of camp plays."

Until playing boorish Councillor Albert Parker with all due pomp and ceremony in When We Are Married in March 2003, Paul had not participated in a Theatre Royal production since The Front Page in 1981. Yet he had always retained his affection for the York theatre.

"I first came here in 1979, as a callow youth, and I had most of the second half of the year here," he recalls.

"In those days we had a quick turnaround: Romeo And Juliet, She Stoops To Conquer, Privates On Parade, Dick Whittington at Christmas. I ran about with a young Gary Oldman and we were inseparable.

"I'd come to York on a player's cast contract where you didn't know until the first day of rehearsal what role you were going to do. You mopped up whatever was left and that's a bit like the spirit of The Pocket Dream: who's free to play what?"

Paul's debut had come in Romeo And Juliet. If you do not recall that 1979 vintage performance, Paul would forgive you.

"I played the well known and demanding role of Abraham, the servant to the Montagues. He says one of those 'bite your thumb' lines so integral to the whole adolescent love story.

"In the next scene, at the Capulet ball, we realised there was so little differentiation between roles that we could swap them over. At the finale, I played the First Watch and had to be terribly distraught over the death of Romeo and Juliet. What a performance."

All this puts him in mind of the makeshift environment in The Pocket Dream, in which almost all the cast of a repertory production of A Midsummer Night's Dream decamp to a pub, leaving the stage manager to battle on with two egotistical actors, a stage hand, front-of-house-manager and a gym teacher to fill out all the roles.

There is nothing like being thrown in at the deep end on stage, he says. "I'd already done Brideshead Revisited and All Creatures Great And Small on TV before I came to York, but the reason I'm so fond of the Theatre Royal is that it was the best training ground in repertory theatre, and sadly young actors don't get the same exposure now.

"Twenty one weeks on a player's contract from mid-July to the end of January the following year, and I just went 'Yeah' at the fantastically fabulous sum of £65 a week."

He enjoyed his belated return to York last year - "All those letters must have got through eventually, and I had a wonderful, really heartening time doing a Yorkshire comedy to a Yorkshire audience," he says - and on the final night he felt emboldened to give artistic director Damian Cruden a not-so subtle hint.

"Damian said 'I hope you'll come back at some time', and I said 'I'd love to... and by the way, do you know that I direct?', which was very pushy," he says. "That's not like me, but perhaps it was because it had been 22 years and I didn't want the gap to be that long again."

The Pocket Dream, York Theatre Royal, until July 17. Box office: 01904 623568.

llFANCY THAT...

Actor and director Paul Clayton first encountered comedienne Sandi Toksvig when playing her mother, yes mother, in Old King Cole. "It was 24 years ago. I was the wicked Queen Brenda, and she was Princess Daphne, in one of those mad things by Ken Campbell," he says.

Pass the soap...

More soap stars in York, to mark Lucy Benjamin's appearance at the Theatre Royal in The Pocket Dream, from this week until July 17

Gillian Taylforth

Kathy Beale, EastEnders

Stage-play debut as Vic in psychological thriller Bad Blood, Grand Opera House, March 2003

Roy Barraclough

Alec Gilroy, Coronation Street

Variety entertainer Mr Harry Troop, Feed...!, Grand Opera House, June 1994

Lorraine Chase

Steph Stokes, Emmerdale

Siobhan, queen of the Tunbridge Wells slimming scene, Love Me Slender, Grand Opera House, May 1999

Sam Kane

Hairdresser Peter Phelan, Brookside.

Jigger Craigin in Rodgers and Hammerstein's Carousel, Grand Opera House, York, March 2000

Frazer Hines

Ladies' man Joe Sugden, Emmerdale Farm

Buttons, Cinderella, Grand Opera House, 1993-1994; knife-wielding crook Croker, Wait Until Dark, April 2001

Ian Lavender

Derek, EastEnders

Noel Coward in Noel & Gertie, Grand Opera House, October 1999

Dudley Sutton

Wilf, EastEnders

Friar Laurence, Romeo And Juliet, Grand Opera House, May 1998

Deborah McAndrew

Angie, Coronation Street

Robin Hood in Robin Hood And The Babes In The Wood, Grand Opera House, 1996-1997

Leonard Fenton

Dr Legg, EastEnders

Sir Roland Delahoye, thriller Spider's Web, Grand Opera House, August 1996; old hand Joseph, Wuthering Heights, Grand Opera House, September 1997

Chloe Newsome

Vicky McDonald, Coronation Street

Suzy, Wait Until Dark, Grand Opera House, April 2001.

Charles Hutchinson

Updated: 15:41 Thursday, July 01, 2004