ANTONY Jardine has almost the perfect French name for starring in The Secret Garden but he was born in York.

"Fulford Hospital in 1980," says Antony, who is appearing in Jessica Swale's adaptation of Frances Hodgson Burnett's novel at York Theatre Royal from tonight to August 25, directed by Liz Stevenson.

"I'm playing Dr Craven, Pitcher, the man servant, and Mr Lennox, Mary's father, in India, just as I did when we first performed the play last Christmas at the Theatre by the Lake in Keswick, when my fellow York actor, Frances Marshall, was in the cast too. But she's now doing Alan Ayckbourn's revival of Joking Apart in Scarborough this summer at the Stephen Joseph Theatre."

The Secret Garden marks Antony's first professional performance at York Theatre Royal but he is no stranger to the theatre. "I played here as rather a precocious teenager in John Doyle's days as artistic director, when I was a Prince in the Tower to [perennial pantomime villain] David Leonard's Richard III, so I still got David Leonard's villain – even though I never did a panto here!" he recalls.

"I also remember playing a workhouse boy in York Amateur Operatic and Dramatic Society's Oliver! and I was in Willy Russell's school-outing play Our Day Out, when I wanted to be one of the bullies but they said I was too nice!"

Any others, Antony? "There was Peter Pan with Brian Blessed as Captain Hook and Toyah Willcox as Pan, when I played Slightly, a slightly soiled Lost Boy, which was a lot of fun," he recalls.

"I went off to university at Goldsmiths in London and then Mountview [Academy of Theatre Arts] and have been gainfully employed occasionally since then!"

Antony follows his partner, actress and cellist Joanna Hickman, into the Theatre Royal. "She was in Juliet Forster's Studio production of Angels & Insects, based on an A S Byatt story, playing Matty Crompton opposite Jonathan Race, in 2013," he says.

Now comes The Secret Garden, Hodgson Burnett's story of orphaned Mary Lennox leaving behind India for a new life with an unknown uncle at the mysterious Misselthwaite Manor on the wild Yorkshire moors.

"I think it sits fantastically well in the Theatre Royal, which has had a brilliant redesign that makes it more intimate," he says. "That suits this play as it's an intimate piece but one that deals with grand themes."

Theatre by the Lake's The Secret Garden runs at York Theatre Royal from tonight (July 27) to August 25. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk