French's dream come true

A Midsummer Night's Dream is Shakespeare on acid. It is strange.

But the reason I decided to do it is I've always wanted to work with the director, Matthew Francis. I worked with him a little when he was artistic director at Greenwich Theatre. He mentioned the idea of doing the play a while back. We both wanted to do it from the beginning, but there wasn't time.

Matthew has set the play in a manor in the English countryside during the Second World War. The house signifies Athens, and during a bombing raid it falls apart to reveal our wood. I play Bottom. Now I've only performed Shakespeare at school - I'm really spectacularly bad at it. In fact, I've noticed that even our lovers are very funny in this production, which is annoying me a little bit. So they may have to be destroyed.

Basically, I'm making Bottom a noisy character, a confident, slightly misguided person, who really wants to play every part. I'm realising that the weird and wonderful thing about Shakespeare is that it is all there on the page. You look at a jumble of things you don't understand and invent lots of clever ideas which you think are completely original, then you realise, as you look back at the text, "Oh, it's there already."

Matthew Francis has got a great cast together. I've worked with many of them before. Joanna Scanlan (who plays Snug) did a Murder Most Horrid with me. A girl called Geraldine McNulty (who plays Starveling) has done a couple of bits and bobs for French And Saunders, and another Murder Most Horrid. I knew Jemma Redgrave (who plays Titania/Hippolyta) through the director, and Paul Rider (who plays Flute) and Gillian Kearney (Hermia) were in When We Are Married at the Chichester Festival Theatre.

The director didn't know that Gillian and I knew each other, so that was a nice happenstance. Hey look, I even think in Shakespearean these days.