Colin Tierney tells Laura Davis how he is coping at rehearsals for the revival of smash-hit show Tartuffe

HE MAY not be a true cuckoo in the nest, but, like the wily impostor he plays, Colin Tierney is a newcomer.

While most of the cast are returning to the roles they played in the Capital of Culture hit show, the Liverpool-born actor is stepping into the lead role of Tartuffe, left vacant by John Ramm.

Playhouse artistic director Gemma Bodinetz is directing the revival of the 2008 smash, as she did the original, and Joseph Alessi returns as easily duped nobleman Orgon.

“I’m the new boy,” declares Tierney during a break from rehearsals.

“But they’re all good and supportive, so they’re treating me very gently.”

It’s just over a week into rehearsals when we speak and he is still feeling his way around the character – created by 17th-century French playwright Moliere and retold by Liverpool’s own Roger McGough, who wrote it in between performing on a Saga cruise ship.

“It takes a bit of time to navigate your way through the character and how he fits into the play.

“It’s tricky but it’s enjoyable,” says Tierney, 43, who played John Lennon’s father, Alf, in the 2009 bio-pic, Nowhere Boy.

“The script is completely fantastic. I love it.

“It’s so witty and complete fun, and the wordplay is amazing and the characters so well drawn that it’s a joy to work on, but it still means you have to delve deep.”

It is his first Moliere – and McGough’s, too, although in between the original production and this one the poet fitted in a second, The Hypochondriac.

The latter’s success, both at the Playhouse and elsewhere, paved the way to Tartuffe being brought back for a UK tour.

After its Liverpool run, it will travel to Cambridge, Newcastle, Richmond, Exeter, Brighton, Ipswich and Watford.

While the other characters speak in verse, McGough has written the womanising rogue in prose – a hint that he is not what he seems.

While Orgon and his mother, Madame Pernelle, bow down to Tartuffe’s apparent divine wisdom, the audience joins the rest of the family at seeing through his deceit.

“You can play him in many different ways because he’s such an impostor,” says Tierney, who was born in the Scotland Road area of Liverpool, but grew up in Walton where his family still live.

“He’s in this household pretending to be a holy man, but we all know he’s a scoundrel, so it’s then up to me how far I want to exaggerate this deception or how realistic I want him to be. It’s great fun.

“He’s definitely a psychopathic character, a narcissist.

“Even though he’s very funny, it seems as if it comes from this dark place with him.

“It’s a gift of a part.”

Tartuffe is Tierney’s and Bodinetz’s fifth production together, including Liverpool writer Jonathan Harvey’s Hillsborough play Guiding Star in 2002, Hamlet at Bristol Old Vic and the Edwardian comedy, A Lady of Leisure, at the Liverpool Playhouse in 2006.

“The work I’ve done with Gemma has been so completely varied that it’s great because not many directors give you the chance to reach your range in that way,” he says.

His connections with the Williamson Square theatre go even deeper – it was there as a member of the Playhouse Youth Theatre 24 years ago that he fell in love with acting.

“Doing the play there makes it sweeter,” he says.

“I’ve always loved going to see plays at the Playhouse because it’s such a great theatre – the scale of it just seems to work.

“I know the theatre well and it’s very special to me so any chance I get to come back I will.”

His first play, performed in the Playhouse Studio which is being reopened next month, was Making Hay, by Liverpool writer John Fay, who went on to create scripts for Brookside, Coronation Street and Torchwood.

While with the youth theatre, he appeared in a wide range of shows, including restoration comedies, plays by St ephen Berkoff and gritty prison dramas.

“It was genuinely going to the Playhouse Youth Theatre and improvising and meeting other people who were interested in the same thing that the light went on and I thought ‘this is what I want to do’.”

TARTUFFE opens at the Liverpool Playhouse tomorrow and runs until September 17.