Play features star of small screen

If you see a bloke around Whangarei this week who reminds you of someone from English soap EastEnders, you are so right.
Actor Gavin Richards, who played the role of EastEnders' Terry Raymond for five years, is in town with his production of The Drawer Boy.
A three-performance season opened at Forum North last night. The play was seen by over 5000 people when it debuted on a South Island tour in 2003. Whangarei is the second stop in a North Island tour.
At first sight Gavin Richards is likely to give audiences a strong deja vu experience even if they have never watched EastEnders.
While he modestly describes himself as "a jobbing actor," he was busy in television and theatre in Britain for 20 years.
His CV from 1980 reads like a Who's Who of programmes that have hooked New Zealanders in droves over the years - he had guest roles in Inspector Morse, Minder, The Bill, A Touch Of Frost ("David Jason is a nice bloke"), Driving Ambitions and Lovejoy amongst others. He was also betting shop owner Alex Christie in Coronation St.
Acting in soaps was a mixed blessing, he said.
"I had some fantastic storylines in EastEnders. You get good patches but you have to go along with some very improbable story-lines. Characters that are working well can be wiped to make way for new ones in target age or social groups. It can be incredibly frustrating."
Crucially, being in a soap too long could be a killer for a wider career.
He said he got out of EastEnders when he felt Terry (Tiffany's dad) was starting to ``bore for England.''
This freed him to work in theatre and other television, often with his wife, New Zealander Tamara, a production manager.
The couple met here in 1987 when Gavin was touring in comedy 'Allo'Allo. "She was so good at what she did they grabbed her and took her back to England," he said. She then ran the show at the London Palladium.
The couple and their two young children settled in the Marlborough Sounds three years ago, forming Theatre South in 2003 to tour The Drawer Boy, Canadian Michael Healey's tribute to an Ontario farming community.
The play, reset in South Otago, was a big hit with both rural and urban audiences.
Gavin Richards believes this is how theatre should be.
"You can't just thrust Shakespeare and Chekhov at people and say, enjoy. You write about the groups who drive our economy and you set it in familiar situations and take the plays out to these communities," he said.
"This is at the very centre of making drama relevant."
His co-actors are Eddie Campbell, Oscar-winner Anna Paquin's voice coach, and Matt Wilson, winner of a 2004 Chapman Tripp acting award.