FORMER EastEnders actor Shaun Williamson is on a run of playing less-than-menacing gangsters.

Appearing as Public Enemy #13 Moonface Martin in Anything Goes, he adds to the comedy capers of the award-winning musical comedy.

The show, which tells of the madcap antics aboard a luxury liner travelling from New York to London, sails into Manchester's Opera House on Tuesday.

Hop aboard for sassy heroines, mischievous mob bosses and tap dancing sailors in this tale of romance and hi-jinks on the high seas.

Shaun, who played hapless Barry Evans in EastEnders for 10 years, said: "It's really exciting to be part of it.

"It's just great fun.

"It's a total comedy farce, everyone is running around the ship.

"I had never seen the show for some reason. I missed it when it was out last time.

"I'm just on a streak of playing really bad gangsters.

"I played one in The Ladykillers, Guys and Dolls and One Man, Two Guvnors.

"Moonface Martin is public enemy number 13 so you get the impression he's not particularly good at his job."

Transporting audiences to the magical age of tap dancing and high society, it features songs I Get A Kick Out of You, You’re the Top, It’s De-Lovely and Anything Goes.

Shaun, who won ITV's Celebrity Stars in Their Eyes for his performance as Meatloaf, said: "It's fantastic.

"I get to sing a couple of great songs and I do more dancing than I have ever done in a musical and that's including Saturday Night Fever."

A latecomer to the world of acting, singing and performing, Shaun spent his early years employed in a number of jobs, from a postman to an assistant at supermarket Safeway and then a rep at Pontins.

He learnt his craft at amateur theatre groups, later setting up his own and staged a production of A Day In The Death Of Joe Egg for which he won Best Actor in the Kent Drama Festival.

He said: "I did all sorts of weird and wonderful jobs.

"I didn't step on the stage until I was 25."

The father-of-two has spent the past year touring with the National Theatre's production of One Man, Two Guvnors and will star in pantomime Robin Hood later this year, until January 2016.

He said: "By then, I will have been in work since April, 2014.

"I'm very lucky."

Cole Porter’s Anything Goes, also starring Coronation Street's Kate Anthony and Olivier Award nominees Debbie Kurup and Matt Rawle, will be at the Opera House, Manchester, from Tuesday until Saturday, April 18.