It's odd for an actor to choose a role if the thought of it makes him feel physically ill, but such was the case for Gary Shelford. The idea of playing all 25 characters in Guy Masterson's adaptation of George Orwell's classic allegorical novel, Animal Farm, presented a nausea-inducing challenge for the young London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art graduate. "I thought: 'I'll take it'," says Shelford of the role. "I've done so many boring parts on telly. Sometimes you have to challenge yourself."
The 29-year-old actor, who brings his vocal menagerie to Dubai for a five-day run starting tomorrow, has received rave reviews since he first appeared in the one-man show at the 2006 Edinburgh Festival. He has gone on to perform it more than 150 times. "I was only meant to be doing it for four weeks," he says, "and I've been doing it ever since." The play is a spectacular showcase of Shelford's versatility. The only prop is a wooden box, yet Shelford gives all the characters - from the horses to the ducks, donkeys and dogs - distinct bearings and voices.
The idea of a grown man doing animal impressions may sound farcical, but Animal Farm is anything but. Regularly cited as one of the past century's most important works of literature, it tells the story of animals that evict their farmer and assume control of the farm. The pigs say it is to be run along egalitarian principles, but they soon start to bend the rules to allow superior pigs more privileges. Conditions for lesser animals deteriorate as the top-ranking pigs assume an increasingly human appearance. Orwell's intention was to satirise Stalin's communist regime, which he saw as tyrannical and ultimately unworkable.
Presenting Animal Farm as a one-man show from an unadorned stage makes the narrative easier for the audience to digest, Shelford says. "It's done in such a way that every time I go back to a different character, you recognise them straightaway. It means you're concentrating on the story, not on the sets and costumes," he says. Masterson, an acclaimed actor, director and producer, adapted the story in 1995, and originally starred in the show. His ground-breaking production was a sensation at that year's Edinburgh Festival, and he played the role intermittently - taking the show from London's West End to Hong Kong, Trinidad and Kosovo - until 2004. He spotted Shelford's performance in Angry Young Man at the Edinburgh Festival in 2005 and asked him to take on the challenge. Daunted by the size of the role, Shelford initially turned it down.
Masterson's one-man productions of other well-known texts have received similar praise: Shelford calls his performance in his 1994 adaptation of the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas's work Under Milk Wood a theatrical "tour de force". Masterson played 69 characters. "Guy mastered the one-man show," Shelford says. "He worked out how to keep an audience interested - because it's hard to look at one person for all that time and not lose concentration. You need to keep bringing in new characters in different ways and with different sound effects and lighting."
Under Milk Wood transferred from Edinburgh to London's West End and abroad, touring for 15 years. The Times called it "one of the most inventive, remarkable performances of the decade". Masterson, who is now the producer of Animal Farm, is also directing Bob Golding in Morecambe at the Duchess Theatre in London, an acclaimed one-man show about the legendary British comic Eric Morecambe. Masterson may have fine-tuned the niche theatre form, but Shelford says it is a one that many actors shy away from - for obvious reasons. "With a normal cast, you've got other people to bail you out if it goes wrong," he says. "You get a rest. But with this, it's you and that's it."
At almost two hours long, Animal Farm is enormously taxing, both physically and mentally, Shelford says. "It's such an unnatural physical thing to do, to talk for that amount of time and run around the stage. It's absolutely exhausting." To prepare, he spends 30 minutes warming up "mainly vocally because I don't have a microphone and I have to use so many different ranges of voice". That many actors feel reticent about taking on such a task may explain why only a fraction of London and New York's theatrical offerings are one-man shows. Golding finishes his run in Morecambe on Sunday, while a Broadway run of It's a Wonderful (One Man Show) Life!, starring Jason S Grossman, has just wound up.
There have, though, been several outstanding productions in recent years. In 2004, Anthony Sher's adaptation of Primo Levi's account of Auschwitz, at the National Theatre, was showered with praise: "At the end of this remarkable performance there was a silence unlike any other I have experienced in a theatre," wrote The Telegraph's theatre critic, Charles Spencer. In 2008, both the New York and London runs of Vanessa Redgrave's solo performance in David Hare's adaptation of The Year of Magical Thinking (the American writer Joan Didion's account of her husband sudden death) sold out.
Such productions may delight the critics, but one-man shows can be an acquired taste for the audience, Shelford says. "It's a style of theatre that very few people have seen because it is unusual. It takes them a couple of minutes just to tune into how it's being done." Shelford, who has also appeared in films including Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason and BBC series such as Silent Witness and EastEnders, enjoys the relationship between the audience and the solo performer. "It's nice for the audience to see one person giving everything," he says. "There's a mutual appreciation. I'm going to thank you very much for sitting through this, and you're going to thank me for doing it."
Shelford feels that the buoyant state of London's West End - theatres are fuller now than they have been in decades - comes with depressed economic times. "It's interesting," he says, "that with arts and culture, whenever there's a recession, some of the best work happens. Because people are going through some stuff, it gives them the will to have a voice." On the downside, he admits, there can be an unwillingness to take risks. "People are producing sure things at the moment," he says. "They'll put on a famous play in the West End and it will sell. People are going for the safer option."
Scratch the surface, though, he adds, and independent theatre is alive and well. "There's a company in London called DryWrite; it's all about new writing. You go and sit in a pub and you see all these great actors who no one's heard of doing amazing theatre. That's what I find inspiring." Once he finishes Animal Farm, Shelford is looking to pursue more comic roles. "I'm drawn to off-the-wall characters," he says.
It can, after all, only get easier. "This is definitely the most challenging role I've done. But what it has done is make me not afraid of taking any parts, anywhere in the world. It doesn't get harder than this." Animal Farm plays at the Dubai Community Theatre and Arts Centre from tomorrow until Saturday. Tickets are available from www.timeouttickets.com. For more information call Ductac at 04 341 4777