WHEN you start method acting while still at school, a career on the stage is probably pretty inevitable.

"I never wanted to be anything else," Pete Ashmore tells me. "When I was about seven I got the part of Oliver and I really did think I was the star of the show. Until I watched the video back when I was 11 and realised that actually Fagin was the star.

"Then later on in the school play I got cast as the boy who gets beaten up by the bullies, except I got so into the part I sort of beat myself up before the bullies even got hold of me."

Following school Pete applied and got into drama school but the smooth run to the stage soon ended when he graduated and started looking for work.

"I started busking for a living but I'd be doing silly things like turning up late for auditions," he adds. "It was a really tough two years and then I got my first season of 'Rep' at the Citizens Theatre in Glasgow and that really informed how I worked from then on. I realised it was like being an athlete training in the gym. I needed to work at my skills as an actor and that's what I did."

Pete has been a familiar face at the Mercury Theatre in Colchester for many years.

His first show was David Copperfield in 2008 working with long established Mercury Company actors such as Ignatius Anthony, Tim Treslove, Roger Delves-Broughton and Christine Absalom.

"It was a wonderful time," he smiles. "Coming in and working with all those wonderful people I still felt very much a part of the company, albeit a junior member.

"Just working with people like Roger, Tim and Chrissie was a great experience for a young actor because you learn so much just watching them work."

Rather wonderfully Pete has the chance to work with Christine again as she too has been cast in Private Lives.

"It's been great coming back," he continues, "especially with Chrissie and although there isn't the company as it was, I think the spirit of that is definitely still around. It's essentially great people together to create something exceptional so in that respect it's exactly the same."

Noel Coward's comedy of manners focuses on divorced couple, Elyot and Amanda, who, while honeymooning with their new spouses, discover that they are staying in adjacent rooms at the same hotel. Despite a perpetually stormy relationship, they eventually realise that they still have feelings for each other with disastrous consequences.

"Elyot has to be one of the most famous characters in theatre," Pete says, "and I suppose the most important thing is to try and attempt to be funny but it's Coward so it does feel a little like a music piece with its own crescendos and rhythms. I've not done a Coward before but during rehearsals it feels like I have, perhaps because it is so familiar."

But while Coward may be familiar, according to Pete it's anything but comforting or cosy.

"I don't think it's comforting at all," Pete insists. "So much of it looks at the way we behave and actually that can be rather uncomfortable viewing. I think it's rather wicked, cunning and sexy, constantly shocking but in a charming and beautiful way. Esther Richardson the director and Sara Perks the designer are really pushing the boundaries. There's a more timeless feel to our production with no real interest in making it a period piece."

After Private Lives, Pete is sticking around for the summer as he's also appearing in Wind in the Willows.

Playing the part of Ratty he will be re-united with another Mercury favourite in Dale Superville, who is playing Toad.

"We had so much fun doing James and the Giant Peach last year," he says. "The experience was so rewarding and the director Matthew Cullum had so many brilliant and clever ideas, I cannot wait to see what he comes up with this year."

It will also be an opportunity to see Pete's musical side. An accomplished fiddle-player when he's not on stage, Pete helps out with a number of London folk groups.

"I've been playing for years," he says, "after having lessons when I was young but those guys are the proper musicians. I just sub in for them when they need someone else to play."

Although anyone who saw Peach last year might disagree with Pete's modest assessment of his musical prowess.

"Well that's very kind of you," he replies to my compliment. "But it wasn't always like that," he confesses. "During one performance I had a kind of out of body experience and went completely wrong. Unfortunately it was right at the point when one of the other characters says my playing is 'marvellous' except on that occasion it was far from so."

Private Lives,

Mercury Theatre,

Balkerne Gate, Colchester.

May 20 to June 4. 7.30pm and 2.30pm (Thursdays and Saturdays).

£25 to £10 plus concessions. 01206 573948.

www.mercurytheatre.co.uk

Private Lives - History

Noel Coward wrote Private Lives in 1930 following a bout of flu he contracted while on a tour of Asia.

While Coward himself played the part of Elyot, Gertrude Lawrence was cast as Amanda, with Adrianne Allen playing Sybil, and Laurence Olivier as Victor.

During rehearsals the Lord Chamberlain, whose job it was to censor plays up until 1968, took exception to the second act love scene, labelling it too risqué in light of the fact the characters were divorced and married to others. Coward went to St James's Palace in person to plead his case by acting out the play himself and assuring the censor that with artful direction the scene would be presented in a dignified and unobjectionable manner.

After touring the country, the play opened at the new Phoenix Theatre in London the same year. A Broadway production followed in 1931, and the play has been revived at least a half dozen times each in the West End and on Broadway. The leading roles have attracted a wide range of actors, among those who have succeeded Coward as Elyot are Richard Burton, Alan Rickman and Matthew Macfadyen, and successors to Lawrence as Amanda have included Elizabeth Taylor, Maggie Smith, and Lindsay Duncan.

The play is also notable for the inclusion of one of Coward's most popular songs, Some Day I'll Find You, which he wrote especially for the 1930 production.