ACTOR and director Kenneth Alan Taylor describes his upcoming role as the antique dealer Gregory Soloman in Arthur Miller’s The Price, at the Octagon, as a “once in a lifetime part.”

“The part of Soloman is an actor’s dream,” he says. “He’s a phenomenon. He sort of takes you over.”

Soloman provides the comic light in Miller’s story of two brothers coming to terms with the differences in their lives following the death of their father. The play will be directed by the theatre’s artistic director, David Thacker, who had a close working relationship with Miller during his lifetime, and worked particularly closely with him on the first ever production of The Price.

Despite having waited his entire professional life to play the part (more on which later), Taylor admits that he is a little nervous about first night.

“I shall be frightened, but I’m also very excited and very intrigued at how he’s going to come across,” he said. “I find him funny, but this is the terrifying thing — Arthur Miller found him hysterically funny. David said Miller used to watch it and roar with laughter at him.

“He’s a performer, almost a song and dance man, but he’s more than that, there’s pain underneath him as there are with all Miller parts.”

Over his long professional career, Taylor has made a name for himself as the writer, director and panto dame at the Nottingham Playhouse’s annual pantomime, and as artistic director of the Oldham Coliseum. Although he has known David Thacker for a long time, this is the first time the pair have worked together.

“We are chalk and cheese, and yet we get on unbelievably well,” he says. “I’ve worked with so many different directors, from the brilliant to the appalling. We are very different — his wife Margot once said that we should run a theatre together because I would do all the frothy plays and he would do all the serious plays.”

It is this long-standing association that led Thacker to think of Taylor when it came to casting the role, although he got the part in a most unconventional manner.

“Usually your agent will ring you up and tell you about a part, that’s the normal way to do it,” says Taylor. “I got a text one Sunday after noon that just said, ‘Hi, Thacker here. Do you want to play Gregory Soloman?’ I thought, of course I want to play him. I’ve wanted to play Gregory Soloman since I was too young to play him in the 60s when he was first written, I can’t reply with a text message. So I rang him and we went from there.”

Miller always denied that the play was about him and his brother when he wrote it, “but if you read his autobiography it’s all there,” says Taylor.

“The other extraordinary thing about this play is that I have a speech that could be about 2011,” he continues. “It’s about materialism and what a throwaway society we are.

“A lot of the talk about the incredible suffering of the 1930s, it’s happening now. It’s extraordinary how some of it resonates — there is nothing in this play that couldn’t happen in London or Oldham... or Bolton.”

• The Price runs at the Octagon Theatre, Howell Croft South, from March 10 to April 2. Tickets cost £9.50 to £21.50. To book, visit octagonbolton.co.uk or ring 01204 520661.