Serena Evans is nothing if not persistent. The actress best known to TV viewers as Sgt Dawkins in The Thin Blue Line, realised her ambition to work with Alan Ayckbourn and now, as she tells Steve Pratt, she's appearing in Shaw's Candida, which tours to York later this month.

Would-be actress Serena Evans had one ambition - to work with Scarborough's resident playwright Alan Ayckbourn. And, wiithin a year of leaving drama school, she had succeeded and was appearing on stage at his theatre in the Yorkshire seaside town.

Her association with Ayckbourn started even before she began training. "I had worked as a dresser on Ten Times Table in the West End, dressing Julia McKenzie," she recalls. "I just wanted to be her and work for him. I kept in touch after that. I did a lot of writing to him."

Her persistence paid off and Evans has appeared in several of his comedies. Her appearance in Henceforward, in Scarborough and later in London, won her an Olivier nomination for best supporting actress. She also appeared in his play Things We Do For Love, again in London's West End.

Coincidentally, actor-director Christopher Luscombe revived that play in Harrogate earlier this year and now directs Evans in a play, not by Ayckbourn but George Bernard Shaw - Candida. The Oxford Stage Company production tours to York Theatre Royal at the end of this month.

She and Luscombe first met, as actors, while doing another Ayckbourn play, A Small Family Business, at Chichester Festival Theatre.

There has been vague talk of her returning to Scarborough next year, but the problems "vis a vis children, mortgage and marriage" resulting from a long summer away from home are still being weighed up. She's married to an actor, Daniel Flynn, and with children aged 16 and ten, being away from home for long stretches takes some organising.

Evans would love to do more work with Ayckbourn "because I have reached the age where there are some fantastic parts he has written for women".

She explains: "There are lots of wonderful parts for women over 40 which I'm looking forward to. I always thought that, hopefully, I would reach my prime when I was 40."

She's best known, to TV viewers at least, from the BBC's The Thin Blue Line, the police station comedy starring Rowan Atkinson and written by Ben Elton. She played Atkinson's sensible, live-in girlfriend and police colleague Sergeant Patricia Dawkins.

The series was "fun to do", while Atkinson was an "exacting" co-star. Then she changes her mind about that particular word, replacing it with "methodical" and "perfectionist". "It's satisfying because when you get it right everyone is pleased," she says.

Her CV does include episodes of crime dramas such as Trial & Retribution and The Ruth Rendell Mysteries, but also an awful lot of comedy, including The Piglet Files with Nicholas Lyndhurst and The Comic Strip Presents series.

"Comedy was always what I imagined I would do," she says. "I wanted to act from when I was very young and liked making people laugh. So that was kind of the way it went - and I wanted to work with Alan Ayckbourn."

Acting was, perhaps, inevitable, given she comes from a family of actors. Her father is Tenniel Evans and her grandfather Leslie Banks. "I always wanted to do it. I don't know whether that's a mistake or not. It was something I got into my head and decided it was something I wanted to do and held on to that idea," she says.

"I feel very lucky. It's a great job really because you spend a lot of time at home and away. It's always fun and scary."

Shaw's Candida offers something different from her usual comedy parts. She plays the title role, a vicar's wife with whom a young poet falls in love. Evans has never seen the play but had read it last year at the suggestion of a friend hoping to stage it. That fell through but later Luscombe offered the part in the Oxford Stage Company revival.

"I said, 'Yes, please'. It's a lovely play to do as I've spent a lot of my career playing mad characters. It's nice to play someone who's not being silly and be given a chance to do something different," she explains.

She feels that Shaw's play stands up well for modern audiences. Those who've seen it on tour have been keen to discuss it, which she always considers a good sign.

"We have tried to make it as accessible as possible to a modern audience. It's the old emotional triangle, although it leaves people wondering and thinking. Everyone who comes to see it wants to talk about it afterwards," she says.

She has mixed feelings about the touring side of the production. "It's a way of getting theatre to the people and it's important to get out of London and to the rest of the country," she says.

"I find it very hard work because I'm a home bird and I have kids. It's better now they're older. When they were younger I just didn't tour."

* Candida is at York Theatre Royal from July 27 to 31. Tickets (01904) 623568.

Published: 22/07/2004