Lenny Henry is about to tackle Shakespeare’s black villain Othello. Nick Ahad meets the Dudley comedian who’s rehearsing for murder

Over the course of an hour, I keep wondering: “Will the real Lenny Henry please stand up?”

Now and then the mask slips and Henry stops performing. In those moments you see a man desperate to be taken seriously after a lifetime of making jokes. But for the most part he is what he is – a born performer.

Henry in full flow is an impressively large figure. A woolly hat pulled low over his freshly shaven head seems an attempt to preserve his anonymity in a crowded West Yorkshire Playhouse.

It is no more than a token effort and one which is immediately undone whenever Henry is “on”, which is most of the time.

All eyes in the theatre cafe point one way. His booming voice, impressions (which are countless), over-exaggerated hand gestures which accompany all his stories – elicit one response from the impromptu audience – complete fascination.

Which is why we are here.

Late last year the irrepressible Barrie Rutter, founder of Northern Broadsides, the Halifax company which performs Shakespeare in a northern accent, convinced Henry to play Othello in his company’s spring production.

“Look, man, this is my first time doing this, I’m terrified,” says the actor. “Okay I’ve been on stage before, but I’ve never done this. I’m just a little kid at the minute and Barrie and the rest of the crew are taking me by the hand and showing me the way.”

Well into rehearsals Henry is buzzing. At first more than anything he wants to show off how well he knows his lines.

“We’ve just run the first half of the play and we didn’t use the books,” he says, sounding like a 10-year-old boy showing off his best conker.

“There’s this great speech where Othello says. . .”

And he’s off, dropping in Shakespearean speeches with all the fervour of a new convert.

“It’s made me want to learn some of the sonnets next. You know how you meet these people who know sonnets off by heart, well I really want to be able to do that.”

And that is a part of the answer to one of the main questions Henry has been asked, and will continue to be asked up until opening night on February 14: why?

From winning New Faces in 1976 as a teenager, the Dudley lad’s career has been built around making us laugh. Admittedly he has had success playing serious roles in Chef and as a headteacher in the BBC’s Hope and Glory, but when he is at his funniest is also when he is at his most successful – Tiswas was his big TV break.

So why on earth would he want to, at the age of 50, take on a role so alien to everything he has known before? It turns out Henry has lofty ambitions.

“I love TV shows like The Wire. I loved Hill Street Blues, The Sopranos,” says Henry, excitably.

“They’re all great shows because the actors in them have done lots of stage. All the guys in the Sopranos had done loads of stage acting. Gandolfini apparently did an incredible Stanley in Streetcar Named Desire. Basically, anyone good has done lots of theatre.

“If you’ve only ever done telly, then you can only ever give a telly performance. Stage gives you something that you can only get from having actually done work on stage.

“I’m learning from watching Conrad (Nelson, who will play Iago to Henry’s Othello) that what you can explore all the different corners of the text and find some of the million different ways of doing it.”

Henry looks like a little boy, excited at the opportunity he has been given and almost seeking permission to take it. “They’ve all done it, why can’t I?”, he seems to be asking. Given this unexpected vulnerability, it seems somehow unfair to bring up the question of the critics.

“After this experience, I definitely want to do more acting. Why should I not do it just because someone is being snooty about it? Barrie believes in me, so why do I need to listen to someone being snooty?”

What is clear is that Henry is ready for the challenge.

Henry also talks about his wife (who he always calls “my wife Dawn French off the telly”), does a small comedy performance about doing his own laundry and mentions countless famous friends, but it is in these brief moments when he is being himself that he is most interesting.

Henry stands, clicks his heels together, shakes my hand and says: “My liege.” He’s acting again.

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The first inkling that Lenny Henry wanted to play Shakespeare came in an Express & Star interview with Peter Rhodes in October 2005.  But back then Henry said playing Othello was “a mug’s game”.

Here is an excerpt from that interview:

That other big, underrated buffoon, Matthew Kelly, has recently metamorphosed into a great stage actor playing Lenny, the simple psychopath in Steinbeck’s classic Of Mice and Men and Malvolio, the love-sick steward in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night.

And now, hesitantly but clearly, Mr Henry wants it to be known that he is eager to play Lenny. And, one day, Malvolio. As we chat, he hedges around the Sh-word like a bashful bride. I suggest he would make a great Othello.

“Not Othello,” he says firmly. “Playing Othello is a mug’s game. But Malvolio. I’d like that. Shakespeare is not part of my life. It’s like another language.”

And yet everybody (or at least everyone in Gornal) knows that if Shakespeare came back tomorrow, he would be most at home with Black Country English as spoken in Gornal.

Which is all it takes to get Lenny Henry doing his Hamlet, Prince of Gornal: “T’bae or not t’bae / That’s the kwestin, ay it?”

* Northern Broadsides’ production of Othello starring Lenny Henry runs for a month at West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, from February 14. It comes to the Midlands during its national tour. It is at the Belgrade Theatre, Coventry, from April 7-11 and at the New Victoria Theatre, Newcastle under Lyme from April 28-May 2.