IT might seem strange for an actor to say this but Andrew Dunn is enjoying his acting.

No disrespect to his tours of duty as canteen manager Tony in the solid if unspectacular theatrical offshoot of dinnerladies, but two subsequent repertory roles in quick succession in Yorkshire have had him whetting his lips.

No sooner has he finished starring as a baffled husband opposite playwright Kay Mellor in A Passionate Woman at Hull Truck Theatre than Andy has moved up the East Coat to Scarborough, where he is playing another husband in the world premiere of Fiona Evans’s The Price Of Everything at the Stephen Joseph Theatre.

“When I received Fiona’s script, it was one of the best things I’d ever read, and Andrina [Andrew’s actress wife, Andrina Carroll] read it and said ‘you’ve got to do that’, because it’s not the sort of role I’d be associated with normally as it’s not comic buffoonery,” says the self-effacing York actor.

“There is comedy in it but it’s a role that gives me a chance to do more than that, and it was time for that having done dinnerladies on tour for a year and a half. I’m an actor and I wanting to be doing more than a rehash, and that’s why I did A Passionate Woman as well. It’s good to feel like an actor again – and I could commute from home for both shows!

“Both plays I’ve thoroughly enjoyed doing and they’ve made me feel like that’s why I’m acting, as you can get pushed down avenues, which can be fine jobs but not necessarily what you want to keep on doing.”

He did not name dinnerladies at this point, because he is a pragmatist as well as an idealist, as all actors must be, and he knows on which side his dinnerladies bread is buttered. After all, a second theatrical helping of dinnerladies is strongly rumoured to be in the offing.

Just as he was invited to reprise his dinnerladies TV role on stage, so he was asked by director Noreen Kershaw to play self-made and self-destructive businessman Eddie Carver in The Price Of Everything. “I did an episode of Heartbeat four or five years ago that she directed, and she must have remembered me from that,” says Andrew.

The play that takes its title from Oscar Wilde’s oft-quoted aphorism: “A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything but the value of nothing,” a sentiment so apt for Eddie Carver.

In stark contrast to his humble beginnings, Eddie now boasts a millionaire lifestyle of exotic holidays, flashy cars, designer clothes and country pursuits, but one evening his behaviour becomes erratic. Will the high walls, electric fences and CCTV keep evil at bay or is the real threat to his family’s idyllic life already inside the perimeter?

“Eddie is very wealthy, from his own means, working his way up, but he’s now reached the crisis point where things go badly wrong,” says Andrew.

“His business dealings have come back to haunt him, but he’s worked it out in his head how he’ll use the same solutions as always: you should stick to your methods, as a good businessman does, so he’s come up with his solution and he’s going to go through with it.”

Eddie’s story, inspired by real events apparently, is a modern-day tragedy, according to Andrew. “The play has all these universal themes, and it’s not just a British problem; it’s a Western problem,” he says.

“Fiona likes to picks subjects that are controversial, like the gunshot deaths at Deepcut barracks for Geoff Dead: Disco For Sale and now this one as well.”

The Price Of Everything runs at Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, until November 13. Box office: 01723 370541.


Did you know?

Fiona Evans won a Fringe First award at Edinburgh with a play called Scarborough. It was not about the East Coast resort, however.


Only One Question for…The Price Of Everything playwright Fiona Evans

Why made you write The Price Of Everything, Fiona?

“As a kid, I remember walking past a really exclusive housing estate with my dad: huge imposing houses, high fences, tree-lined gardens that went on forever. I was so envious… what would it be like to live in a house like that?

“ My dad assured me, ‘it’s all debt; they’ll be crippled with mortgage repayments, probably living on jam sandwiches’. I didn’t know what a mortgage repayment was and although it sounded pretty bad, I didn’t care – I could grow to love jam sandwiches, especially if I had a pony! I so badly wanted to be the little girl who lived in that house.

“The Price of Everything is an attempt to look behind the closed doors of those dream homes, to explore the lengths people go to for an apparently idyllic lifestyle and to ask the question: Is it worth it?

“The façade that people create intrigues me. I’m very much a ‘what you see is what you get’ type of person – or am I? Is this just what I want you to believe? My interest lies in the gap between image and reality. This subject is relevant now more than ever, especially given the press and public’s (apparently ever growing) interest in the private lives of celebrities, politicians and royalty.”