Former Coronation Street star Chris Hannon talks about playing Billy Liar opposite Helen Fraser

Billy Liar rarely fails to attract an outstanding cast. Albert Finney starred as Billy ‘Liar’ Fisher (the young Yorkshireman who’s big on ambition but small on honesty) when it opened in the West End in 1960.

Finney was understudied by Tom Courtenay, who went on to star in the classic, much-loved 1963 film which also featured a sweet early turn from the gorgeous Julie Christie (as one of Billy’s three fiances).

Keeping up this tradition, the Middle Ground theatre company’s production sees former Coronation Street star Chris Hannon play Billy, Dicken Ashworth as his dad and, most excitingly, Helen Fraser (who played Billy’s prim and proper fiance, Barbara, in the film) as his mother.

“It has got a really good cast and I’m not just saying that because I’m in it,” Chris said with a laugh.

“You can tell if something is going to be a turkey and if something has got potential and half way through rehearsals we started to think ‘this is going to be good’.”

It’s the pedigree of the talent and not taking on the iconic part and material which has been cultivating the most nerves, said Chris.

“Obviously, we’re all slightly intimidated by her, but the girl who is playing Barbara, Lauren Drummond, was really intimidated.

“But Helen was really generous and gracious with her. She brought in loads of pictures from the original production.

“What’s interesting is Helen met her husband on Billy Liar, he was a sound recorder, so it’s come full circle of her coming back to do the stage show.

“It’s great and she’s so sweet as well.”

Helen’s experience has obviously been an influence on the cast, yet her casting and some original recordings created by her husband for the film aside, the company has been keen to find its own version.

The staging and design will no doubt help the production make its own mark on Billy Liar’s impressive history.

Director-designer Michael Lunney’s set has so much detail the audience will feel like they have travelled back in time and Billy’s daydream sequences, which made the film such a visual treat, will be pulled off with much theatrical flair.

Chris said: “The one big challenge of the play is how to go into Billy’s fantasy world. “In the film they cut away to these big, lavish set pieces where Tom’s a soldier, for example. In the play we snap into red wash and there’s loads of sound effects to punctuate it and everybody else on stage freezes.”

It’s a device which works for evoking the piece’s humour (when reminiscing previous conquests he does so to I’ve Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts) and its pathos; he conducts an imaginary funeral march too. “I cannot tell you how much I enjoy it,” added Chris.

“It’s so much fun. It can be quite an incongruous play, you’ve got two acts of high comedy and then it switches, not into melodrama, but kitchen sink. But it’s been great to play that full range of stuff from comedy to tragedy, so yeah, it’s a great part.”

Chris has enjoyed the research process too. He has read books on the physicality of lying and watched a library of 1960s films for the part.

“I love all the plays and the films of the period, of the 1960s,” he said.

“It was just this big moment for British drama. You’ve got post-war Britain and we’re getting over that and there’s all this new money is coming into the country.

"It’s the first time the term teenager appears and you’ve got all these people who are more socially mobile and have these ambitions and aspirations which go beyond living in the same town all their lives like their parents have done.

“It was a real fulcrum point for Britain and a lot changed and all these plays and films capture that. Saturday Night Sunday Morning does, the lead character in that is quite apathetic towards the world, he just wants to get out there and do things.

"Billy wants the same thing. This sentiment reflects what young people were thinking during that period, they didn’t have any great ability or talent necessarily, they just thought the deserved more than their parents had.”

Billy Liar, March 10 to March 14, Greenwich Theatre, Crooms Hill, Greenwich. 020 8858 7755.