Count of Monte Cristo: Getting to grips with theatre life in the fast lane

Video: Sneak preview of The Count of Monte Cristo and interviews

"You can kill a man with this book," Alan Lane has quipped several times over the past few months.

The deadly book is Alexandre Dumas's The Count of Monte Cristo, and while Lane means his quip literally – his point being that it is a big book and could do serious damage – before I go into the rehearsal room, I wonder if it is actually going to kill someone.

Namely him.

Lane is directing an adaptation of the novel which he has spent four years working on with writer Joel Horwood.

He and the writer took the epic, sweeping novel and turned it into something like a manageable stage play.

At least, they call it manageable. The production features puppets, physical theatre, dancing and six actors playing 42 parts.

Any piece of theatre is demanding for a director, but would a piece as complex as this be too much even for Lane?

In the rehearsal room, I take a seat and Lane says to his actors, not for the first, nor I imagine the last time: "Who is stage left at the moment?" Variations of this question must surely be the most often asked question in this rehearsal room. With six actors playing all sorts of characters with more exits and entrances than can be counted, it is a wonder that anyone can keep a track of all this action.

Lane is one of the country's brightest young directors. Based in Leeds, over the past few years he has regularly travelled outside of the county to present work with his much praised theatre company Slung Low.

He has been at the Barbican in London, in and all around the Lowry in Manchester (the work the company creates is site-specific and often uses all the space it has available) and has been favourably reviewed by the New York Times.

This project is one which is close to his heart and one which sees a sort of homecoming for the young director, who began his career as an assistant director at the West Yorkshire Playhouse.

Four years ago, he went to Ian Brown, artistic director at the Playhouse, with the idea of staging the brilliant Dumas novel.

Lane, who also regularly lectures in theatre directing at various universities, was recently working with up-and-coming directors at the National Student Drama Festival where his show was the talk of many at the festival.

"At the NSDF, people kept saying to me 'I can't wait to see it' and I would always answer 'neither can I'," says Lane.

"There has been a lot of determination in making this piece and in trying to make it work in the space of two-and-a-half-hours with a cast of six.

"Now I'm starting to get excited about the idea of getting to see it actually happen and get on stage, because I have sweated over it for years now."

Lane's rehearsal room is in the large open top floor of the Playhouse's rehearsal building behind the main theatre. When I visit, there are heaters all around the cold room, although they seem redundant when

you watch how hard the actors are working in rehearsal.

When they are not on stage, co-ordinating complicated dances or scene changes, they are sitting on sofas at the back of the room running through lines in an incredibly complex script.

As director Lane says his job is to be the leader of the room. He has assembled a talented cast – as well as acting, the skills in the

small cast include musicianship, stand-up comedy and dance.

After rehearsal, over dinner, Lane says: "There are actors out there who would be happy to be told where to stand and deliver their lines, but with a show as demanding as this, we needed to have ultra-talented performers who would be able to think and contribute to making this a great piece of theatre."

Back in the rehearsal room Lane is choreographing a scene change and, as if to demonstrate his later point, an actor comes up with a suggestion for some physical comedy.

Lane ponders it, but decides against the idea, telling the actor: "I like it, it's strong, but wrong."

He then has to work out how a wall on stage will be pulled back to reveal another character.

He pauses for a moment then asks the actors sitting on the side line: "Is anyone going to be off stage left at this point who can pull the wall to the side?"

Later, over a half-hour break before yet another late night of rehearsals, I tell Lane that he looked more serious in rehearsal than I have previously seen him.

Lane says: "Almost every page presents a different staging problem, or an acting problem or costume problem that requires a different solution from the one you've already used.

"It means the show is a lot of fun, but getting it on stage is a serious business.

"That's why you saw my serious face – we're all working really hard trying to navigate this story together for the audience."

Fortunately, it seems all the hard and serious work in rehearsal, should translate to a lot of fun for the audience.

"If you look at the Playhouse over the last few years, the nights when the building really burned with a passion was the nights when Kneehigh had a show or the guys from Peepolykus, and our show is going to be of that kind of world.

"It's not going to be pretentious or self-observing; we are making this show with the simple idea of telling the audience a story and keeping them entertained along the way."

The Count of Monte Cristo runs at West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, until May 15.