LIFE for Martin Shaw is coming full circle, but in a very interesting way: nearly thirty years ago, he starred in what turned out to be producer Bill Kenwright's first big West End hit, The Country Girl, at the Apollo Theatre.
On that occasion Martin played a young director Bernie Dodd trying to lure a veteran, alcoholic actor Frank Elgin back to the stage in this classic Broadway play by Clifford Odets, originally premiered in New York in 1950.
Now, Martin is himself being lured back to the stage to play that veteran actor this time around, with Mark Letheren as the director and Jenny Seagrove as his long-suffering wife Georgie, now touring the UK and visiting Shrewsbury en route back to the West End's Apollo.
Isn't it odd to watch another actor playing a role you once did, I ask him? "You'd think so, but actually it isn't," he replies. "I don't remember it – it goes into a different block of memory, and I've done so many jobs since then! It's been a long time.
"Every now and again there are odd moments that flash in my mind. But I'm just too preoccupied with playing Frank now to think too much about Bernie!"
It is also, he points out, an entirely different production. "Rufus Norris, who is directing this, is keeping it all moving – there are hardly any scene changes, the scenes glide into each other so it is moving all the time.
"In a way, it is much harder – if plays go in sections, you can compartmentalise them subconsciously, but this is one continuous maelstrom of events."
So that's one challenge, but he also has the comfort and security of starring opposite Jenny Seagrove, an old friend ("we go back 15 years"), with whom he also co-starred in TV's long-running Judge John Deed.
This is the first time they have appeared on a West End stage together, though they've previously done a play in Windsor. It helps that they know each other so well, having to play husband and wife here.
"It's just natural – we can ease into our working relationship, and also we know each other's moods quite well. She knows when I'm really frustrated with myself, which usually looks like to the outside as though I'm frustrated with everything whereas in fact she knows damn well I'm annoyed with myself. And I can tell when she's the same – when she can't get the role and thinks she's an absolutely lousy actress, which of course is nonsense but we all go through the same insecurity!"
Of course, The Country Girl is a play about the insecurity of actors and the challenges of acting as a way of life, too – and much else.
"It's also about addiction and truth-telling," Martin adds. "It's very uncomfortable to play this role actually – he's such a lying, treacherous man, which of course is the addict – it's the drug that makes him behave like that, but at the same time, you have to take responsibility for taking the drug."
Martin's got an addiction of his own: to working in the theatre, which he keeps returning to. Why, with all his fame for TV series like The Professionals, The Chief, A&E, Rhodes, Judge John Deed and Inspector George Gently (which returns for another series at the end of August) does he like the theatre so much?
"With TV and films – but TV especially because of the economic pressure – it is always about acting your first idea.
"Almost invariably the script will have been horrid, too, because TV writers write under pressure, they don't have the luxury like a playwright of bringing something up and polishing it and honing it – they just dash it off.
"It's a different skill altogether. It's about realism, making it work, keeping it economical and keeping it entertaining. But you never get a chance to go deep."
And that's what he looks forward to being able to do here. "I'm looking forward to the stage when you can start polishing – its building the rough shape that is so painful. Once you've got the rough shape, and I know what that is now, then it is just polishing it – that's a much more enjoyable and less apprehensive and paranoiac process."
Everything is much more hurried in TV, in every sense. "Although it is exhausting, the longest performance you do there is about two minutes, and that's your whole performance, then you have a break and then you do another two minutes.
"Sustaining something for twohours, as you must in theatre – that's when it becomes an art form, this is when you become someone like a ballet dancer or a pianist or painter, where a lifelong training and experience is brought to the fore.
"So if I'm not going to dishonour and disenfranchise 45 years of work, I need to come back to the theatre whenever I can."
So why has he chosen to come back to this play, in particular? "It just seemed like a good idea. It wasn't a great yearning or anything. Bill and I had done A Man For All Seasons three years ago. He always says, 'What do you want to do next, son? Just let me know, and give me six months notice to put it together. I can't remember whose idea it was, but about six or nine months ago, one of us said let's do The Country Girl again – but change roles. I think it was almost said as a joke at first."
But the play they're doing is no laughing matter, and he's looking forward to the painful excavation of character that it entails. So, I'm certain, will audiences as they join him as he delves into the private demons that haunt a public man.
The Country Girl is showing at The Theatre Severn, Shrewsbury, from Monda, August 16 to Saturday, August 21. Contact 01743 281281 for ticket deails.
Alternatively visit the theatre's website which is www.theatresevern.co.uk