Opening night to remember for Crucible

EVER since the Sheffield Crucible closed more than two years ago, Yorkshire audiences have been eagerly awaiting its reopening. Finally, the big day is upon us and while theatres are not built around individuals, when the curtain officially goes up next week all eyes will be on two men in particular.

While Sir Antony Sher will be firmly in the spotlight, attention will also be turned to his director Daniel Evans, the man who is now

in charge of the newly refurbished theatre.

An Enemy of the People began playing to impressive houses last night, but the play is previewing until Wednesday next week when the official opening night takes place. When we meet, in a quiet Crucible building two weeks before opening night, Sir Antony and Evans are taking a break from intensive rehearsals.

From the moment he came in to post last year, Evans has seemed just the likeable and energetic individual Sheffield needs.

He is also a smart man. Evans knows that lots of people will be watching when the theatre reopens.

Since Michael Grandage took over the building in the late Nineties, the Sheffield Crucible has become a powerhouse of regional theatre. Two years in the dark were necessary for refurbishments to take place, and whenever the theatre shut to allow for the 15.3m improvements, two things were always certain: it was never going to be the right time and its reopening was always going to be a major event.

Evans has capitalised on the fact that everyone will want to see the first production in the "new" Crucible, by using it as leverage to lure Sir Antony to perform on the theatre's stage for the first time.

If all eyes will be on the Crucible, Evans has decided to give them something worthy of the attention.

"Please, call me Tony," insists Sir Antony, sitting down with a plate of sandwiches. Squat, with dark, curly hair, the most extraordinary thing about "Tony" is that he looks entirely ordinary.

This is a man who can hold an audience of more than 1,000 in his thrall, as anyone who saw the extraordinary production of The Tempest last year, will testify. In that production, and in his many famous roles in a career stretching over two decades with the RSC, Sher has seemed like a giant, yet up close and in the flesh, he is entirely unremarkable.

Polite, courteous, friendly, nothing about him gives away the fact that this is one of our greatest stage actors. Sher's incredible stage career has featured performances including a legendary Richard III with the RSC which won him all manner of awards, and many other big Shakespearean roles.

He is also renowned for his writing, which appears in novels, autobiography and journalism and his painting and drawing, which has seen him exhibit in venues including the National Theatre.

Is it not, frankly, a little unfair that all this talent, resides in one man? Sher feigns guilt. "Sorry."

Add to the list of positives that he doesn't take himself too seriously.

On a serious note, though, where does this compulsion come from? Sher says it is from being addicted to what he does. "The energy comes from being a workaholic really. It is my fix, work," he says.

Later in the conversation, we return to the subject, and Sher reveals the root of this titanic energy and seemingly limitless talent, come from his childhood.

Sher, knighted in 2000 for his services to theatre and literature, was born and raised in South Africa.

It was there that he discovered his talents, later fulfilled in England.

"I think it comes from having felt like a sort of martian as a kid in South Africa because they were so sports mad," says Sher. "The white society I grew up in was a very brash, macho, rugby playing, beer-swilling place and I could have been from Mars in among all that.

"I was this small, weedy little chap and I found escape in art, in painting and drawing to start with, and then later in acting classes. It was so liberating to find that I could be of some worth in this society where I felt worthless and that's where my addiction grew to the arts. I suddenly thought 'I can do something, I'm not just a failure in the eyes of this macho society'."

Sher came to England to fulfil his dreams. Here he studied at drama school before joining various theatre groups in the Seventies, learning his craft, then joining the RSC in 1982 in order to perfect it.

Despite his steady rise to the top of his game, Sher says he has never felt comfortable.

"Gay, Jewish, white south African, that's three minority groups," he says, now able to smile while listing the crosses he has carried through life.

"I wasn't ready to come out as gay. Jewish I was a bit worried about because I couldn't see any examples of great leading classical actors who were Jewish, and white South African was a problem because my political education didn't really start until I got here and I suddenly realised I'd been part of one of the most abhorrent societies on earth. Apartheid is an atrocity to rank alongside some of the most appalling atrocities of the last century."

Unable or unwilling to identify his true self, Sher says: "I went into three closets really as a young man.That's why I think the arts are so important to me and why I still feel an outsider."

We get on to the discussion of the outsider while talking about Dr Tomas Stockmann, the character Sher is about to play in the Ibsen play An Enemy of the People.

The play tells the story of a spa town which is thriving. Dr Tomas Stockmann knows there is a toxic secret in the public baths, which have brought the town wealth.

"This is the biggest part I've played," says Sher. "He's never off stage and he never stops talking."

Evans says working with Sher has been a privilege.

"Working with Tony is amazing. There is something animal about him. He is so fast, he works so quickly. You're watching a master. You really are."

And so will many more, once the Crucible reopens its doors.

An Enemy of the People, previewing until February 17, then to March 20. 0114 249 6000. An exhibition of Sher's paintings will be on display in the Crucible during the run of the play.