York-born actor Antony Jardine did a double take when his agent told him about an audition for this year’s community play His Last Report at York Theatre Royal.

Who could blame him as his personal family connections with the real life characters and story being portrayed on stage could hardly be stronger.

“My agent said she had an audition for me in York and I thought ‘brilliant, I’d love to be back in York and work in my home city’,” he explains.

“She sent over the script, and I saw it was about the Rowntrees, I thought that’s great I know the Rowntrees well and then when I read the play, I couldn’t believe all the other connections.

“I was born and raised a Quaker. I went to New Earswick primary school, which is the school that the Rowntrees built for the village of New Earswick. I learnt to swim in the swimming pool which gets name checked in the play. I went to the library which is also mentioned in the play.

“I went to Bootham School, which is the same school that Seebohm Rowntree went to, and my dad worked for the Joseph Rowntree Housing trust for 44 years. When I met the directors Juliet Forster and Paul Birch for my audition and told them about the connections they couldn’t believe it either.”

Antony is one of two professional actors leading the 100-strong community ensemble in His Last Report, written by Misha Duncan-Barry and Bridget Foreman. He plays Seebohm Rowntree, whose life and work provides the basis the play.

He published three reports looking at poverty in York and those reports went on to become the basis of the welfare state. They did remarkable things for the quality of life for people and particularly for people that worked at the Rowntree’s chocolate factory at the time and lived in the village of New Earswick.

In the second half of the play, the timeline moves around, with the audience seeing what Seebohm Rowntree would make of the modern world and how after the years that have passed his research has come into fruition. The play uses a lens to look at what’s going on in society today.

Has Antony approached playing a real life character any differently to a fictional role? “It raises questions about what source material you have and how you use it,” explains the actor.

“It’s very hard to do an accurate imitation and it's fair to say that a lot of our audience might not have met Seebohm, so that gives us a bit more freedom to take what we do know and develop that further. We don’t want to turn him into James Bond or anything like that, but we want our audience to invest in every character on the stage and more importantly, the work they are doing. He’s a very beloved son of York and I really want to get it right.

“We are condensing his life down into two hours, so the journey is much more compact, so much more like a rollercoaster ride. Ultimately the source material is so solid and so factual and that underpins as a foundation for the whole piece. So yeah, great writing, the work is all done for you really.”

He last performed at York Theatre Royal in 2018 in a production of The Secret Garden and is more than happy to return. “It’s a pretty nice city to live and work in,” he says.

“The theatre itself has a beautiful auditorium, as a performer it’s a joy to be on that stage. The vibrancy in the building is incredible, there are so many people working and being creative, which I think Seebohm would have approved of enormously.”

He predicts that His Last Report will be a great night of theatre. “When I first read the script, I was absolutely bowled over by how much is incorporated into it. It’s Shakespearian in its scope; it ticks every box. There’s so much joy, there’s going to be a trapeze, Morris dancing, music, it’s such a great story and so specific to York, but on a national and international scale as well.

“The story is about bringing people together and realising that an issue needs to be addressed, but also the production itself is bringing together a large community of people that can express themselves artistically in the theatre. I think all of that coming together is a rare and special thing.”

His Last Report: York Theatre Royal, 19 July to 3 August. Box office 01904 623568 / yorktheatreroyal.co.uk

The opening night of His Last Report (19 July) is a special ‘pay what you can’ performance to help ensure that as many people as possible have a chance to see the show.