Merlin star's new "douchebag" role sees the Patty Hearst story and #MeToo movement collide

Speaking exclusively to RadioTimes.com, Parker said his inspiration for the part was not too hard to find...

"We're talking douchebags," he said, "And that's quite fun to do, I love playing a douchebag, I love playing a baddie who wants sympathy, because he feels really hard done by and he can't see the other side.

"He's not a fully evolved human being and he certainly doesn't think he's evil."

Written by Katherine Moar, the mind behind Jermyn Street Theatre's sell-out show Farm Hall, Ragdoll is loosely inspired by the real-life story of Patty Hearst – the American heiress who was kidnapped in 1974 and brainwashed into performing a bank robbery by the Symbionese Liberation Army.

"Catherine has very cleverly placed it with Holly as Patty and me Robert as someone like F.Lee Bailey," he explained, "and the reason they're getting back together again at this point, 30/40, years later is because it's the beginning of the #MeToo era, and a story has come out in the press about him. We're never told exactly what the story is, but I think we can all probably presume. So he really wants Holly's approval as a human being."

While Parker and Abigail Cruttenden as Holly enact the modern-day story, the show intercuts with memories of their original interactions in 1978 with Katie Matsell and Gilded Age star Ben Lamb as their younger counterparts.

Parker placed all praise for the show's premise on Katherine Moar who has been a presence throughout rehearsal: "The dialogue is so clever and so easy to say that it comes right off the page.

"It's great to trust the writer. I love that experience of having her in the room, I had it recently with Tom Stoppard when we did Rock ‘n’ Roll at Hampstead and Hilary Mantel when we were doing Wolf Hall, she was in the room the whole time.

"Really good writers tend to be very particular about their full stops and their commas, but if they see you inhabiting a role, they give you a little bit of extra rein and say 'go on, go with it,' which is a wonderful feeling."

But although Parker is pretty gleeful about playing the baddie, he says the audience will need to work out the many layers of his and Cruttenden's stage relationship: "Yes, we make the story absolutely clear, but the audience do have work to do, they're there as part of the agreement between actors and audience, so they've got to be receptive.

"You'll see a relationship that is properly examined and explored in depth, although I think by the end of it their sympathies will probably lie one way."

After Ragdoll, Parker is transferring to Wilton's Music Hall for a special two-night performance of TS Elliot's The Wasteland. In an entirely new challenge, he'll be reading and organising the event altogether:

"Most of my life I've been employed as an actor, but this is me, employing me! I've been a producer a few times and I've absolutely fall in love with poetry in a way that I didn't realise I quite would or could. So I put the two things together."

"It's a very exciting feeling, if not rather nerve wracking, to be honest."

When and where can I see Ragdoll?

Ragdoll is running from 9th October to 15th November at Jermyn Street Theatre.

The studio theatre sits just off Piccadilly Circus, so your best get is to get there on the Bakerloo or Piccadilly lines, or walk from Charing Cross.

Here's our roundup of the best West End shows and the West End's biggest names. Plus our Clarkston review.