Graham Seed on tour at York Theatre Royal in Terence Rattigan's life-and-death drama Flare Path

Based on Rattigan's experiences as a tail gunner during the Second World War, his 1942 drama paints an evocative portrait of the life-and-death existence of the RAF bomber crews in wartime Britain and its impact on their wives and sweethearts, left waiting for their return.

Set in a hotel near an RAF Bomber Command airbase against a backdrop of heartache and quiet bravery, Flare Path tells the love-triangle story of former actress Patricia, wife of RAF pilot Teddy. Their marriage is tested to the limits by the surprise arrival of Patricia’s former lover and Hollywood idol Peter Kyle. An unexpected and dangerous mission over Germany puts Patricia at the centre of an emotional conflict as unpredictable as the war in the skies.

In Justin Audibert's production for The Original Theatre Company and Birdsong Productions, Graham Seed is playing Squadron Leader Swanson in his third visit to York in recent years. In May 2013, he was the implacable Major Metcalf in Agatha Christie's murder mystery The Mousetrap at the Grand Opera House, preceded in April 2012 by his humorous turn as Prime Minister Jim Hacker in Yes, Prime Minister at the Theatre Royal.

Graham spoke to What's On in the wake of learning of Victoria Wood's death the previous day at the age of 62. "I had the privilege of working three times with Victoria, one of them for the famous Is It On The Trolley sketch; once when I had to confide I was in love with Duncan Preston," he recalls. "She told me she liked my character in The Archers so much that she offered me a part on her Victoria Wood As Seen On TV show.

Graham Seed as Squadron Leader Swanson in Flare Path. Picture: Jack Ladenburg

"Victoria's death is such sad news, and it just shows you have to grab life. So here I am, 65 now, gadding around the country in Flare Path. York will be the last week of our run; we've been on tour for 15 weeks and that's enough. Three weeks off and then I'm doing something really exciting. "

What? "I'll be involved in a play that the broadcaster Jonathan Maitland has written called Dead Sheep, about Geoffrey Howe, Lady Howe and Margaret Thatcher, which was put on at the Park Theatre in London last year, when I played the Conservative MP Ian Gow, and is now going on tour but sadly we're not coming to York," he says.

First, however, Graham has another week of Flare Path to negotiate in York. "It's a story of love and war and all those things," he says. "I was drawn to it firstly out of loyalty to The Original Theatre Company, for whom I played the pipe-smoking, fatherly figure Osborne in R C Sherriff's Journey's End, which is a wonderful role.

"I'd failed to get the part in the West End, so here was a chance to do it with this young company who've now followed their production of Sebastian Faulks's Birdsong with Flare Path. I'm fond of Rattigan, I love the part, and with Rattigan, he just doesn't write a bad part. He writes for actors; like Noel Coward, he knows how to construct a play and create characters that suit a long run, where you settle down in a role and keep finding more in it."

Rattigan may have fallen out of favour, but Graham cherishes his plays. "I love the period he writes about, an England that doesn't exist any more with all those repressed feelings that his characters are feeling but they don't show," he says.

"I did Rattigan's Separate Tables in the autumn of the year before last at Salisbury Playhouse, playing a gay, repressed schoolmaster who's taken early retirement from a public school but we don't know why. He was typical of the very English characters that Rattigan wrote.

"Now I'm playing Squadron Leader Swanson, who's a good man behind the stiff upper lip. Every part is different, even if I do tend to always sound like Graham Seed!"

The Original Theatre Company and Birdsong Productions present Flare Path at York Theatre Royal, Tuesday to Saturday. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk