ACTOR Don Warrington is making his (belated) directorial debut at the West Yorkshire Playhouse with Mustapha Matura’s Trinidadian play Rum And Coca Cola, maybe to his own surprise.

“I boarded the bus rather late on the journey, as they had already established what they were going to do and they were thinking about who they wanted to direct it…and they picked on me,” says Don, on the phone from Leeds, his voice so familiar from his ground-breaking role as Phil in the ITV comedy Rising Damp and his superior coffee adverts.

Why has he not directed a play previously? “It’s not something that people naturally think of asking me to do. Circumstances have to be right as people tend to associate you with what you do normally, but I think, on this occasion, the artistic director of Talawa Theatre Company [the show’s co-producers] suggested me. Years ago I’d worked with the company in London in Resurrection.”

Why did he say ‘Yes’ to directing Matura’s updated version of Rum And Coca Cola? “I couldn’t think of a reason to say ‘No’! I couldn’t think of a reason why not!” he admits.

Rehearsals with actors Victor Romero Evans and Marcel McCalla were conducted with a free hand. “There are those who impose their vision on actors but that doesn’t work for me,” says Don. “I’ve never worked with a director who would do that and I don’t think it would well if a director ever did that.”

Matura’s play about veteran Calypso singer The Professor and his young protégé Slim took Don back to his Trinidadian roots. “I try to get back to Trinidad as often as I can,” he says. “Calypso music has played a very important part in Trinidad society, though it’s not quite as potent as it was as many other forms of expression are available now, but in its heyday it was one of the few ways people could express their frustration at the situation they found themselves in.

“The Calypsonian singer used to share the same function as the Fool in Shakespeare’s plays: they were wise and also satirical and acted as the pin prick to burst the hypocrisy and pomposity of the great and the good.”

Don remembers hearing the records of the Mighty Sparrow. “Everyone responded to him, even politicians,” he says.

Just as the Mighty Sparrow was influential in Trinidad, so Don Warrington has furthered the cause of black actors in Britain, although he never foresaw the impact that his role in Rising damp would have. “The truth is, I simply got the part and did it to the best of my ability. I didn’t know what it was going to do,” he says. “It’s only on reflection that people say it was significant, but if that’s their reflection and it did help, then terrific, and I’m very glad I was in a position to do it. But as ever, that was then and this is now and you move on.”

Rum And Coca Cola runs at the West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, until April 3. Box office: 0113 213 7700.

Did you know?

Don Warrington was last at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in 2005, when he appeared in the National Theatre production of Elmina’s Kitchen.