As the renowned ‘silly son’ of York Theatre Royal pantomime since 1984, Martin Barras tells Steve Pratt he was the ideal choice for West End hit farce One Man, Two Guvnors. But it wasn’t easy hanging on to the role YORK panto regular Martin Barrass ends our interview by acting out a farcical scene from the stage hit One Man, Two Guvnors.

I haven’t seen the play and he wants to make a point about this comedy by Richard Bean.

It’s a play with which he’s closely connected. Bean, with whom he’d worked at Hull Truck Theatre, wrote the role of doddery 87-year-butler Alfie especially for Barrass.

He couldn’t do it in the original National Theatre production because he was committed to the in-the-round season at York Theatre Royal, where – along with Dame Berwick Kaler and villain David Leonard – he’s been a regular panto fixture since 1984.

Barrass eventually got to play Alfie in the West End transfer of One Man, Two Guvnors in March, but then found an extension of the run clashed with panto at York. The National has, as he puts it, “moved mountains” to release him from the show so he can be in York.

He returns to the London production immediately Robin Hood And His Merry Mam! closes in early February.

He’s been playing the “idiot son” in panto at the Theatre Royal since 1984, apart from two years when Kaler had a West End contract he couldn’t break. “All those years ago as a lad I really wouldn’t have thought I’d still be here 27 pantos later,” he says.

“There’s something about Christmas where people like the familiar. In years gone by, on television there was Morecambe and Wise with all those guests. Panto is that sort of thing. It’s a nice warm feeling you get.

And a feeling in my pay packet obviously.

“It’s an honour, it really is, to be asked back to take part in such an institution as York panto.”

IT seems that the panto has had an influence on One Man, Two Guvnors in several ways. He’s a great admirer of Bean’s work – “he’s in a bracket of his own – he can write deadly serious plays, political dramas, high comedy, low comedy” – and recalls the writer coming to see the Sinbad the Sailor panto in 2007”

“He said, ‘The scales have fallen from my eyes because I didn’t think panto could reach such heights. It’s as relevant today as it’s ever been, what fun you could have writing a pantomime’. He said one day he couldn’t wait to get cracking. The next thing I know he’s written this full-blown farce.

“The parallels with panto are there in One Man, Two Guvnors – talking to the audience, audience participation, tongue-twister scenes, wordplay, slapstick and even custard pies.”

The panto was mentioned when Barrass auditioned for the role for National Theatre artistic director Nicholas Hytner. “He said, ‘Nice to meet you, Martin, now before we start anything could you do a few pratfalls, walking into walls, falling over?’,” he recalls.

“I went ‘yes’. And Cal McCrystal, the movement director, leaned over and said to him, ‘Martin actually does York Theatre Royal pantomime, we don’t need to see any of that.

“I said I’d be glad to show them some falling over. So really it was my panto training that helped, which is something you don’t learn at drama school but pick up as you go along in your career.

“As a kid I always adored Laurel and Hardy, silent comedians like Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin. It’s the ease with which they seem to be clobbered and bounce back. Tom and Jerry is the ultimate slapstick.

I thought of Tom and Jerry all the time I was doing One Man, Two Guvnors.”

At least he’s getting to play Alfie now. What prevented him originally was a six-month season at the Theatre Royal with a company of actors performing in seven plays. “I was so thrilled to be doing that because it’s everything I wanted at drama school. When they asked, what are your ambitions? I said to play everything.

“They said you can’t do that, you have to specialise.

But I wanted to have a go at doing everything. Some might be better than others, but that’s my lifeblood. The joy is going away finding a voice, a walk, something like that. But it was like waiting for a bus, two jobs came along at once. But this – the Theatre Royal – is the best theatre in the world. The actor-audience ratio is just perfection, no one is too far away. The season offered the opportunity to play so many different characters and then there was the National Theatre opportunity and all that carries with it.”

HE views the role of Alfie as a very physical role – doors slammed in the face, falling down stairs, that sort of thing – but he’s not injured himself apart from the time his mum came to a matinee.

Doing a body slam against a door was the cause, after he decided to give it a little extra because his mum in the audience.

“I was thinking about so many things. I forgot to put my hand on the door first and hit my head. So I got this bit of a gash and as soon as I hit the door I knew it, I was going to bleed.”

He ended the scene with blood running down his face.

Never a good sign, he knows, because it makes the audience uneasy.

Now it’s back to panto and his usual idiot son role.

“The dame has two sons, Robin Hood who is great, fearless, handsome and then there’s me – a bit of a joke.

But it means I get lots of good, silly little scenes,” says Barrass “It’s great and like coming home. I’ve been living in London and boy have I missed York. I got really homesick.

“All of us actors might sit in the dressing room moaning it’s raining or how terrible the dressing room is, all this and that. But all of us agree how lucky we are to be in a hit show in such a great part.”

  • Robin Hood and his Merry Mam!: York Theatre Royal, December 13-Feb 2. Box office: 01904-623568 and yorktheatreroyal.co.uk