Thought I’d stick this up here for anyone who hasn’t seen before and can’t read it on The Times website. It’s old (March 2008!) but brilliant, not only if you love John (and if you don’t, a) you are wrong, b) read this and you will by the end ) but also if you have any interest in theatre at all

I left drama school nearly 3 years ago but the 1st day of rehearsals still feels uncomfortably close to the 1st day of school. Not that I worry Clare Higgins or Simon Russell Beale are going to pinch my dinner money but old anxieties remain on meeting any large numbers of people for the first time. And entering the rehearsal room at the National Theatre today, the place is heaving not just with the director (Nick Hytner) and the acting company, but also with the heads of practically every major department in the building. As if Denys Lasdun’s great monument to concrete weren’t intimidating enough, walking into this hubbub of excited, nervous energy requires me to take a few deep breaths. You can see the relief on people’s faces as they happen across old acquaintances. Normally, this is the time when I find myself heading to a corner somewhere and pretending to become fascinated by the tea urn, but for the first time I’m spotting old friends, including a very close mate of mine from Webber Douglas. The acting profession is really quite a small world - talk to anybody for two minutes and chances are they’ll know your pal Brian who slept with Ophelia on that tour of the Midlands in 1985. But having trained for two years together, Paul and I are pretty familiar with each other’s acting habits so I’m hoping we’ll be able to give one another honest opinions over the coming weeks.

After we’ve gathered into a circle and introduced ourselves (“Hi, I’m John and I’m an actor”, I mutter to the floor, sounding as if I’ve just joined AA), we get straight down to reading the play. Now if the first day is a cause of anxiety in a lot of actors, the first readthrough is synonymous is real terror. I try to look calm and composed but instead look like Hugh Grant only without the winning charm (“Oh, er, terribly sorry, was that your foot? [Deafening silence] Gosh, a lot of talking in this sсript, isn’t there?”)and laughing like I’ve been overdosing on Smarties all morning.

An actor’s approach to the first read can be quite telling, some playing their cards close to their chest and speaking in a virtual monotone while others practically using the bottles of water and garibaldi biscuits as props for their already fully-formed performance. It would have been nice to gauge the general temperature but today I have the first lines of the play and so delve right in. I hit upon the ingenious solution that since I’m utterly terrified, then I can make the character incredibly terrified too and maybe nobody will notice. I can’t help noticing that Simon reads in very hushed tones, as if reluctant to narrow down his choices at such an early stage. However, he comes down very hard on his future son-in-law’s mention of the dangerous love that can exist between a father and a daughter, a sensitive subject that is immediately crushed. Already the closed heart at the centre of the play is beginning to be held up to the light.

During the break, everyone is astonished by how genuinely funny the play is and also how shocking. This is an evening where audiences get taken from an almost Wildean drawing room comedy to seeing a beneficent female Salvationist getting hit across the face to finally witnessing the hero of the peace advocating revolution and by extension, terrorism, as the only means of achieving progress. Nick emphasises that for the play to be engaging the characters must be rooted in a solid reality and not be allowed to become hollow ciphers for Shaw’s philosophical arguments.

Still pinching myself that I’m able to call the National Theatre my place of work for the next six months. Since seeing Denis Quilley as Falstaff here in the mid-1990s I have been a real theatre junkie, constantly asking my parents to keep taking me to see the new productions. During my time at Webber Douglas I worked here as an usher and so learnt just as much in the evenings as I did during the day, jumping at the chance to watch Alex Jennings, Helen Mirren, Michael Gambon, Jim Broadbent, David Tennant and, of course, Simon Russell Beale.

Today I’ve been catching up on my homework. My most recent job only finished last weekend so I’m feeling a little behind and since Steven Undershaft is a graduate of Harrow and Cambridge with aspirations to be a politician, I should know my onions. Plus there are some extremely brainy people in that rehearsal room and I’m displaying the mental capacity of a cabbage leaf.

It’s been a great week, still sitting down and working through the text but everyone is relaxed with the conversation moving from 14th century monasteries to the unresolved sexual tension between Britomart and Undershaft. Nick Hytner told a hilarious anecdote about his appointment with the Queen (“Oh, are you the George III fellow?”) and I’m still slapping myself that I’ve got a ten minute opening scene with Clare Higgins. After a costume meeting in which I’m measured in every conceivable place, I sneak into a playreading of The Astonished Heart to coincide with the current production of Present Laughter. It has a tone I had not ever associated with Noel Coward - almost wholly serious and a shockingly honest portrait of the pain we can unwittingly inflict on others.