The one prediction no-one made back in 1975 was that the future would be almost the same as the present.

No, there would be flying saucers, civilisations on other planets and aliens in silvery hoods.

That, at any rate, was the way TV envisioned it. In 1999, they said, we'd be going about our business in skin-tight string vests and rubberised suits.

Jeffrey Kissoon led the advance guard. In 1975, ITV's costume designers kitted him out in exactly that clobber, for the kitsch sci-fi series, Space 1999. Come the real 1999 he was back to wearing the polo shirt and slacks he had on in the first place.

"The only thing that's really changed is the technology," he says on his mobile in an unseasonably sunny Bath city centre. In 1973 he'd have had to scour the streets for a working Post Office phone box.

Kissoon was fresh out of drama school when Gerry Anderson, creator of Thunderbirds, cast him as Dr Ben Vincent in his new, live-action series set in the near future.

Anderson had already got his fingers burned with his previous venture, UFO, set in 1980. He should have known that the future was only just around the corner.

"They had this idea that by 1999 there would be flying cars and communities in space," says Kissoon. "They squeezed me into this tight suit, so I'd bulge all over it. And I had a huge Afro hairstyle."

However, it wasn't his costume that caused him to quit Space 1999 after just one series. "If I'd listened to my bank manager I'd have stayed," he says. "Maybe that's what I'd do now. But at the time I felt I had to get into the theatre.

"It was considered helpful in those days for young actors to cut their teeth in the provinces, so off I went to the Bristol Old Vic."

He has seldom been away from the theatre since, working with Peter Hall at the National, and extensively at the RSC. He was also Fortinbras's Captain in Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet.

Currently he is to be seen in The Free State, Janet Suzman's radical reinterpretation of Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard, which is making its way from Bath to the West Yorkshire Playhouse.

Suzman, directing and writing as well as performing, has relocated the story from turn-of-the-century Russia to present-day South Africa. The parallels are striking: an upheaval of the social and economic climate creating rich men from poor ones, and vice versa.

"I never thought I'd do Chekhov," says Kissoon. "As a black man I wasn't a part of that culture at all. But this piece could not be more relevant.

"The text has been rewritten completely. In effect it's a modern-day play."

Suzman's character is based on Chekhov's Lyubov Andreyevna, one of the newly-deposed ruling class (in this case, of Afrikaners). She faces losing her beloved plantation, and in particular the cherry orchard which is her link to her dead son, to a newly-enriched family friend of no previous social standing (Kissoon).

Suzman, herself South African, has brought in several African cast members for the play, which she hopes eventually to take to the West End.

He worked first with Suzman even before his Space 1999 days. "I was in awe of her then and I am still," he says. "She's a hard taskmaster, especially since as writer, director and actor she knows what she wants in every area.

"But we're playing it as a comedy, and I can honestly say I've never enjoyed working so much."

His mobile crackles and he pauses to take in the warm Bath air and reflect on his relationship with his boss. "Do me a favour," he asks. "Quote me on that last bit. Janet would like it."

l The Free State is at the West Yorkshire Playhouse from next Tuesday to April 1. Tickets are bookable on 0113 213 7700.

David Behrens

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.