TOBY Gordon's last appearance in a community play in York was the 2012 Mystery Plays in the Museum Gardens before he moved south to take up his drama training at LAMDA.

Toby, now a professional who has shared a London stage with Juliette Binoche in Antigone, has returned to his home city to play Lucifer in the 2016 York Minster Mystery Plays.

"For me, the Mystery Plays are incredibly important and the way I have got to know the community talent in York," says Toby, taking in the magnificence of the Minster Nave and Max Jones's grand design of stone steps once more.

"This production was a chance to work with people who I've worked with before who I knew were brilliant and also people I haven't worked with before, and when I saw that Phillip Breen was the director, I thought 'I have to do this'."

Toby knew Phillip from his studies at LAMDA, when he directed Toby and his peers in Steve Waters' Fast Labour in a professional showcase production in 2014. "I was struck by his attention to detail and his unique directing style." he recalls.

"Of all my graduate teachers, Phillip was the keenest, and he was a huge part of my development there, so I thought, 'if I do the Mystery Plays, he will have the same attitude', and he has shown exactly that attitude, so I've become something of an acolyte."

York Press:

Gordon's sin: York actor Toby Gordon as Lucifer at York Minster. Picture: Duncan Lomax

He is full of praise for the grand scale of Phillip Breen and Max Jones's production. "Phillip and Max are just two guys who said, 'we are going to do this' and they've done it and that's really impressed me," says Toby.

His involvement in the York Mystery Plays stretches back to 2002, when his school drama club entertained the crowds in intervals between the Wagon Plays. In 2006, he was a wagon pusher for York St John University's play The Creation and The Fall of Adam and Eve, and in 2011 he played a young, uneducated labourer from York in 1392 in Anthony Minghella's Two Planks & A Passion at York Theatre Royal. A year later, he was cast as the third soldier in the Crucifixion scene amid the ruins of St Mary's Abbey.

"In terms of the history and future of the Mystery Plays, it's important that they continue with the Guilds of York's Mystery Plays co-existing with the Plays being put on in bigger spaces, like the Minster this year and the Museum Gardens in 2012," says Toby.

"The 12-year gap between the Millennium Plays in the Minster in 2000 and the Museum Garden production seemed to be too long for those who wanted to be in them, so I think it will be important to do them again on a big scale within ten years."

Toby has enjoyed his reunion with Phillip Breen, working on productions that could not have been more contrasting. "Steve Waters' play Fast Labour was about Eastern European migrant workers in this country; quite a small-scale piece in a studio space, and I definitely got the sense that he knew his way around a play and could use his actors really well," he says. "Now he has absolutely managed the challenge of working on the grand scale in the Minster."

In landing the role of Lucifer after playing Third Soldier last time, Toby has done the equivalent of being promoted in successive seasons from the National League to the Premier League. "I've also gone from having four weeks of rehearsals for professional productions to five months for the Mystery Plays, and in the first two months, I was learning to understudy Jesus too, which was very interesting," says Toby. "I think Phillip knew that doing it over five months might be a bit frustrating for me, so he did me a favour there."

The York Minster Mystery Plays 2016 run until June 30. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk