IT’S amazing, says actor Michael Lambourne, how many people speak to him about a dog. “It’s one role when all I said was ‘woof ’,” he says of playing Roger the dog, in a stage adaptation of My Family And Other Animals at York Theatre Royal.

He’s adding to his menagerie of stage animals this summer, at the same theatre, in Mike Kenny’s admirable stage adaptation of The Wind In The Willows, reprising the role of Chief Weasel he played in a production three years ago.

Several other actors – Martin Barrass (Toad), Jonathan Race (Ratty), and Robin Simpson (Molle) are back in the same roles too with Jacky Naylor as Badger. Artistic director Damian Cruden is again at the helm.

The Chief Weasel is, he somewhat reluctantly acknowledges, the villain of the piece. “Anyone who breaks and enters another person’s home and calls it their own you can pretty much say they’re a villain,” he admits. “He’s a wheeler-dealer auctioneer in this, a sort of London Jack the lad. We also have a young company as young weasels, and there’s something Fagin-y about him. A likeable rogue perhaps.

“We’ve been talking about where the play sits with this view of merry old England that changed after the Great War for the landed gentry. The weasels and creatures of the forest are the rest of society, the city folk encroaching on country lifestyle.”

A scene-stealing dog and villainous weasel aren’t his only animal impersonations. While appearing on stage in Hull last Christmas – as the Big Bad Wolf – he counted up all the animals he’d played and it added up to 16 or 17. “Whenever I’m playing an animal I do like to look at it in its natural environment.

Weasels are small and quick. Tiny, fierce little creatures. It causes so much trouble in the Wild Wood for someone of such little size.

That’s what I quite like about it – it makes such a big noise for such a small animal.”

Although he’d acted at York Theatre Royal before playing Chief Weasel, it was the first time he’d worked with the resident company and Cruden. The assistant director was Katie Posner, now his wife. “I’d met her through Pilot Theatre, which is based at the Theatre Royal, but it’s the first time she’d been my director. Then she went on to direct me in the rest of my life as well,” he says (jokingly, I should add for the sake of marital harmony).

The couple now live in York and have a fivemonth- old daughter, Heidi. Hopefully, Wind In The Willows will be the first piece of theatre she’ll see. “What she’ll remember of it I have no idea. I’m an actor, her mum’s a director. She gets sung to all the time, we tell her stories as much as we can. I’ve moved away from baby books already. I’ve done a lot of work for families and children and it’s nice to now have my audience living with me.”

This is the first stage role he’s done since her birth. “I wanted to have as much time with her as I could. Like any parent knows, you can never get any period of time with your children back. It’s great, it’s nice to have my own little weasel. “Katie is desperate for her to come on stage with me as a little weasel. I’m just worried it will make me look like the Child-Catcher,” he adds.

He enjoys working with young people’s groups at the theatre. He’s seen some youngsters he worked with in 2010 go on to do drama at college and some go into acting as well. “Did those who were in the last experience of Willows go, ‘actually, I really like this and want to go into a career in the arts’? I hope so. I passionately believe that unless we harness the creativity of young people now then they’ll be lost to the arts because the curriculum seems to be downplaying the relevance of creative arts to a hobby.”

He began on stage as a youngster and was in a production of The Wind In The Willow, playing sixth weasel in a school production, when seven or eight. Apart from the Nativity, it’s the only play he remembers being in. “I had one line and, even though I forget every line I’ve said on stage now, I still remember that I said, ‘Hopefully there’ll be lots of food in the pantry’. That’s the only thing I said and my mum said I relished the line – I walked to the centre of the stage and delivered it.”

But there was no light bulb moment when he thought, I want to be an actor. “It had something to do with the fact that I couldn’t think of anything else I enjoyed more than telling stories and making people laugh. I come from a large family. I’ve got a younger cousins and younger siblings and I enjoyed playing with them and telling them stories.

“I fell in love with acting when I realised it was about welcoming people into a space, telling them a story and treating them like family – and that was part of the job.

“But there was no preparation. I didn’t know anything about drama schools or anything like that. I got a good grade at A-level and thought I’ll give that a go and see what happens. I was never good at writing, so I take other people’s thoughts that they write and I speak it to an audience.”

  • The Wind In The Willows: York Theatre Royal, today to August 30. Box Office: 01904-623568 and yorktheatreroyal.co.uk