Kramer hits the stage

It's hard to be a psycho when your soles don't grip. Rehearsing for his West End debut in Arsenic And Old Lace, Michael Richards found his footwear lacking.

'I do a lot of running around stage trying to kill people and it's very slippery,' says the actor best known as Kramer, the kook-next-door in nine seasons of Seinfeld. So he's delighted when his crepe leather shoes arrive in his dressing room, re-shod with extra grip, the following morning. 'Now that's professionalism,' he coos.

Richards works from the feet up. For Seinfeld, he chose Dr Martens - with shiny soles to facilitate skidding.

He keeps the shoes from all his roles at home in California. On display? He looks startled. 'On disp... no! That would be crazy!'

He is not much like his alter ego. Thoughtful, his hair hidden under a Bob Dylan tour hat, his voice is joltingly neutral compared to his croaky creation. He gets Kramerish when vigorous - in bursts of goofing about, agreeing or disagreeing. 'Jerry and the others played close to themselves,' he says. 'I was playing a character but I wanted to be as real as they were.'

Like Mr Spock before him, Kramer was a sideman who took on a life of his own. Richards won three Emmys for the role. At one point, producers had to ask studio audiences to stop applauding his entrances. Did he ever fear he was scene-stealing? Richards is flabbergasted. 'That's a sin to me.

You'd be a monster! I can't think of anything more ugly.' But he did feel constricted by such a densely plotted show. 'I always wanted to do more physical comedy, and there was just no time for it. So the stage, to me, is a chance to become as big as you can be.'

Richards has picked the right vehicle in which to go large. Joseph Kessel-ring's 1941 farce surrounds its theatre-critic hero, Mortimer Brewster (Cary Grant in the film), with grotesques, from his twinkly sweet aunts - keen murderers, both - to brother Jonathan, a whacked-out serial killer remade by a drunken plastic surgeon to resemble Boris Karloff. Guess who Richards plays?

But he chose Jonathan as a bridge between what people expect of him and what they don't - the menace in a role retooled by the producers for Karloff to play on Broadway. 'Sure, I'd like to do Shakespeare,' he says, 'but I want to enter the water slowly.'

A native of LA, Richards started his career in the late 1960s in a student double act with Ed Begley Jr. After he was drafted, the army paid for him to study acting at the California Institute For The Arts - 'nice to hand that bill to Uncle Sam' - then he became a regular on the burgeoning LA stand-up scene in the late 1970s. 'It was Andy Kaufman, it was Robin Williams; a whole generation of American comedy,' he says.

TV came knocking. 'I got one comic acting job, then another then another then another, so I went with the roll.'

Based in London until June, he uses the Tube: 'Can't take a taxi; you're stuck in so much traffic.' He gets recognised but, while he's a cult figure here, at home Seinfeld still plays in syndication every night. 'In America, it's different - I'm so identified with the character, it's hard to shake. That's not a good thing. It's going to take a few years to get past that.'