Tim Firth is always happy to return to Scarborough, as he tells CHARLES HUTCHINSON

TIM Firth loves Scarborough. Next week, the Cheshire playwright and Cambridge graduate is premiering a play at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, the home of comedy laureate Sir Alan Ayckbourn, for the sixth time.

"When I write, I don't think of anybody apart from the characters but it's obvious from my plays that they're suitable for Scarborough because they're comedies and that's a prime concern for me," says Tim, as he prepares for the opening of The Safari Party. "The Stephen Joseph is an arena where comedy is taken seriously, whereas elsewhere it can sometimes be viewed as a debased form. You never have to fight that battle in Scarborough."

Instead, Tim knows his "middle-class moving feast" of a short and fast comedy is assured a warm Scarborough welcome, even if he has given the set builders a particularly busy schedule accommodating the demands of a story line with three sets.

Inspired by a true story, involving Firth's encounter with petty-minded bureaucracy and his thoughts on ownership of the countryside, The Safari Party charts the gradual disintegration of a party meal in which each course is held at a different house in Cheshire. The predatory, participating couples lay ever more traps for each other. "They are three very different sets of people: three ingredients in a cocktail that should never have been put in the same glass," Tim says.

Talent spotter Ayckbourn first gave a summer lunch-time theatre slot to Tim in 1992, when A Man Of Letters was presented as a one-act play and Tim's career will come full circle next year with a new version in the McCarthy auditorium in Scarborough.

"I'm re-writing it as I'd always wanted to give it a new lease of life but it was a question of how to expand it without making it two slices of one small pie or expanding too much it until it popped," he says, having satisfied himself he has found the right ingredients.

Since A Man Of Letters, Version One, Firth has returned to Scarborough to premiere such shows as Neville's Island in 1993, Under The Food Chain in 1994 and most recently the musical Love Songs For Shopkeepers in August 1998, while acquiring a wider audience through the West End success of Neville's Island and his television series Preston Front and Border Caf.

Scarborough remains uppermost in his affections. "I love working at this theatre, and I've grown to know the place over ten years, but having said that, I wouldn't come back if the plays weren't done so well," says Tim. "There's a great cast for The Safari Party and it's wonderful to be working with Alan Ayckbourn again as the director.

"This theatre feels like a holiday home: you come back and the furniture is in the same place - and there's no in-house politics to worry about. You can just concentrate on the play as it's a very writer-friendly theatre, without that slight introspection you can get at London's writer-centred theatres."

He welcomes the challenge of taking on the counter attractions of the East Coast resort.

"I like the idea of trying out my plays in the summer season, where you have to fight against the summer holiday crowds and get them off the beaches," he says. "It's an environment where people are quite choosy and don't just come to the theatre for the sake of it. That has a healthy effect on writing the plays."

Tim is focusing on writing for the stage this year, although he has a television film project with Steve Coogan written and ready for an autumn shoot, set on a cruise ship in the Caribbean. This autumn also will see the opening of Our House, his musical collaboration with who else but Madness, at the Cambridge Theatre, London, where the production will be directed by Matthew Warchus, the director with the Midas touch and the York roots.

"It's my story, my concept, and I've been working with Suggs, Mike Barson and the rest of Madness," says Tim, delighted to be asked by the nutty boys to link up with them. "It's a big romantic comedy, a big London romance, with some old Madness songs, some with new lyrics, and some new songs as well. It should be a joy."

The Safari Party runs wild at Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, April 25 to May 18. Box office: 01723 370541.

Updated: 08:52 Friday, April 19, 2002