Actor ROGER ALLAM removes his frock and talks to Roger Foss about dragging up in Privates on Parade at the Donmar Warehouse

Is Roger Allam as camp as Christmas? He's just posed for a photo-call — as Carmen Miranda. Soon his chest will be shaved and the rest of his visible body hair waxed away. Tomorrow he's looking forward to a wig fitting for a Marlene Dietrich impression. However he's slightly nervous about peroxideing his own head of hair. No, the distinguished RSC and Royal National Theatre actor is nor about to break into a drag act: he's preparing for his debut at the Donmar Warehouse where he will appear as flamboyant cross-dressing Captain Terri Dennis in a revival of Peter Nichols' musical play Privates on Parade. "If we were doing this in a big theatre I'd be able to get away with an awful lot but it's very close up at the Donmar, so we don't want people to see a mass of hair under my stockings, hence the body shaving," Allam laughs.

Of all the characters Allam has inhabited (he's just played another captain, of the pirates, in a television version of The Swiss Family Robinson), the effeminate Terri Dennis probably involves even more external preparation than Adolf Hitler, a role he created in Speer at the National. "I've never had to shave my legs and put on women's clothes before, although I seem to recall doing something in a dress during my first year at university," he says. "Before we started rehearsals for Privates on Parade they got me in to do publicity shots as Carmen Miranda. A make-up artist did my face, then I put on the top half of the costume. I looked hilarious because from the waist down I was in jeans and trainers. But it still took ages to get ready, which was useful to know because I realised just what a performance it is being a drag artiste."

In the show, the Terri Dennis character ("I gave my all for the boys") is more than just a sissy drag queen entertaining the troops with Vera Lynn numbers and talking camp ("Jessica Christ!" he exclaims), He's the officer in charge of an army concert party deep in the steamy Malaysian jungle of 1948 where a fresh-faced young private joins the company and learns about life. This semi-autobiographical rites of passage account of Brits abroad as the sun sets on the outposts of Empire is regarded as one of Nichols's funniest plays and Terri Dennis is unashamedly based on Barry Chatt, a civilian drag queen who was sent out to join Nichols' own wartime entertainment unit.

"I think of Terri just as Peter described Barry in his auto-biography — not a hair on his body, very tanned and very bleached hair," explains Allam, who says his research also took him into the homosexual milieu of the period. "The war and being in the armed services was quite a liberating experience for a lot of gay men like Terri Dennis. Homosexuality was accepted in a way that it wasn't in the 1950s when there was a repressive clampdown. And theatre was a place where outrageous behaviour was allowed. It's even more fascinating when you see the screaming camp as a sort of protective outer skin that keeps other people at a distance."

Funnily enough, Allam created a much more serious protective outer skin when he played Hitler. "It was strange putting on that mask-like face and looking in the mirror. If you do the Hitler hair and moustache right, you've got him, but I also waxed the upper part of my eyebrows to get them more like his. But it was weird taking it all off after each performance. I'd brush my hair back to remove the gel then I'd take the wax out of the eyebrows, which made them bushy. I'd still have the moustache on, and I looked just like Stalin!"

What's On In London
December 5th - December 12th 2001