When you're used to acting the bad lad, it makes a change playing a loser instead.

Nigel Pivaro is familiar to television viewers as Terry Duckworth, the wayward son of Jack and Vera in Coronation Street.

But theatre audiences in West Yorkshire will be able to see him playing an altogether different kind of character.

He takes the part of flash Ray Say in a touring production of The Rise and Fall of Little Voice.

"It's a good part to play. He's an oily character but he's not particularly menacing," said Nigel.

"He's got a degree of humour about him in the sense that he's a bit of loser and that makes him a bit funny.

"The fact that he's such a loser makes him quite sad.

"But while he's very oily and a bit manipulative the thing about Terry Duckworth is there's an edge to him. "Just once in the play Ray snaps and he's devious but he's not malicious whereas Terry can be quite malevolent."

When Ray Say hears Little Voice singing as sweetly as the divas in her father's record collection - Judy Garland, Shirley Bassey and Billie Holliday - he thinks he may have found a gem for his talent agency and a route to fame and fortune.

The play, by Lancastrian writer Jim Cartwright, stars Melanie Marshall as Little Voice.

It was turned into an acclaimed film in which Jane Horrocks took the title role. But Nigel believes the stage version is more authentic.

"I play him as he was written - as a northerner. Pete Postlethwaite played him in the West End," he said.

"I haven't seen the film so it's difficult for me to comment on but I think as a spectacle on stage, if you get a good Little Voice you can do those numbers and those songs really well. It's great entertainment and I don't think anyone who has seen the film will be let down because it's not like some form of action movie that you can see in a film but you can't do on stage.

"Melanie does equally well on stage. She can do on stage what Jane Horrocks did on screen.

"It's set in Scarborough and the part I play is the same as the one played by Michael Caine in the film version only he played him as a Cockney.

"I know Jim Cartwright who wrote the play. I'm from Salford and he's from Farnsworth, which is five miles up the road towards Bolton, so it will certainly be a truer accent than Michael Caine's.

In the last throes of rehearsals before setting out on a lengthy tour, some of the theatre company's sound and lighting equipment was stolen.

"We could have done without that," said Nigel.

"It's a very arduous tour and terms of the number of different dates we are doing and what have you."

Playing a different town or city nearly every night is a very different experience for an actor compared to a long run at the same venue such as the one being enjoyed by The Phantom of the Opera at the Alhambra in Bradford at the moment.

"It can be anything from one night to three nights in the same place. It does make it harder in some ways but in other ways it doesn't," said Nigel.

"Some places we play we all think 'What a shame we've got to leave' but others you're just glad to get away.

"It's part of the challenge, part of the charm of doing a show like this. We get to see lots of places between now and the middle of June."

Nigel has not appeared as Terry Duckworth in Coronation Street for some time - but assures fans that the character has not been written out.

He flits in and out of the soap - and that's the way he likes it. It gives him the freedom to do things like Little Voice.

"I may not go back for some months more. If there's a storyline that they like they notify me but otherwise I get on with my own life and the rest of my work," said Nigel.

"Unless we are playing in Manchester around the time of filming it's no good.

"The fact of the matter was that I was a major character in the show years ago when it really was 20 characters in it. Through the 1980s Terry was a regular character for years.

"I know only too well how restricting it is. I am a young actor and I need to get out there.

"They're paying your wages. It might be all very well to go off and do Hamlet in Chester or York but it doesn't help them. They have got a show and they needs you all the time. You sign your year away or you take a chance."

Nigel is also looking forward to being in a new British film which is due out next year. He plays a drug dealer in Social Suit, which is set in Manchester and also stars Shaun Ryder, best known as the frontman of the Manchester pop group the Happy Mondays.

l The Rise and Fall of Little Voice is on at the City Varieties in Leeds at 7.30pm on April 30 and the Victoria Theatre in Halifax at 7.30pm on June 22. Ring (0113) 2430808 for tickets to the Leeds performance and (01422) 351158 for the Halifax show.

e-mail: simon.ashberry@bradford

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