BEN Onwukwe plays Ellis “Red” Redding in a touring adaptation of The Shawshank Redemption.

A faithful retelling of the classic 1994 film, the production sees Andy DuFresne incorrectly convicted of murdering his wife and her lover and sent to Shawshank State Penitentiary.

In jail, he befriends Redding, a contraband smuggler who is serving a life sentence. As the bond between the pair grows stronger, DuFresne attempts to persuade the resigned Redding that they will one day glimpse the outside world again.

Onwukwe, who played Recall in popular television drama London’s Burning in the 1990s, talks to EDWIN GILSON, frequently slipping between his British accent and the deep Southern drawl of Redding.

Hi Ben. How have audiences across the country received the show on tour so far?

So far, so good. People know the title so well – it’s embedded in their hearts as a great film. I think every day it’s on television somewhere on the planet.

My first instinct when I was approached to do it was that it would be impossible to stage such an iconic film. What’s the limit now? Are we going to have Star Wars at the West End?

What’s next? We like to think we’ve done it justice, though.

How did you overcome these reservations?

I read the script, and the novella, which I had never come across before. I realised the novella is such a beautifully theatrical book that it does the job. Our play relies more on the novella than the film.

Of course elements of the film are still evident, though – for example I’m a black guy, in case you don’t know. As is Morgan Freeman.

In the original story, though, my character is a red-headed Irishman. So we’ve gone with the film there, because that’s what people want to come and see.

Your character, Red, is completely devoid of hope in his situation. Is it a psychological challenge to act out such resignation?

We all feel a sense of despair from time to time. It happens, it’s in the human condition.

But having a character who feels a total sense of despair and acknowledges his own futility is quite hard – it can get you down.

When things go wrong in your own life, you usually cling onto this hope that you will overcome it and you will get inspiration to change your direction. But in this particular environment, in a penitentiary “doing life”, there is no hope. I have the line: “I was guilty as hell, and once you accept that, makes life in this place a lot easier.” Red is aware of his guilt over his crime, whereas Andy is protesting his innocence all the way through, and knows he is innocent. He’s been framed, essentially.

Red’s hope eventually gets restored through his friendship with Andy.

Red becomes institutionalised in the prison due to his lengthy spell behind bars. As an actor, did you do much research into similar real life cases to get a feel for the role?

I have had experience of prison, although not as an inmate. About 10 years ago I took part in a theatre group based in Brixton Prison.

We performed Shakespeare plays with the inmates, as a project to help incarcerated people find a new way of looking at life. We would train these guys to perform Shakespeare plays.

One of the highlights was doing Othello, with Othello and Iago being played by two of the inmates and the smaller parts played by us actors. It was an incredible revelation.

They spend 22 hours in a cell. A lot of them started to depend on this two-hour diversion.

I found that quite helpful to reflect on – not that I’d go away thinking “all these people are innocent”. They’re guilty as hell. It’s about dealing with that sense of guilt and remorse to find a way of rehabilitation.

Were you conscious of not overdoing Red’s alienation from the outside world when he finally leaves prison? Inevitably he has difficulties adjusting.

It’s a bridge you have to cross very delicately.

It’s like one of those really precarious tightrope bridges that characters have to cross in action movies. It can spill out into being maudlin and sickly. This guy has been incarcerated for so long… think about if you had been out of the loop for 20 years and are suddenly then faced with the internet.

The very fact of that would blow my mind.

It blows my mind anyway. Red certainly has that feeling, in a different time – the modern day completely fazes him.

Do you ever wonder what the future would hold for Red after the film ends? We find him in a fairly hopeful position at the climax, meeting up with Andy once more.

I do, yes. When they reunite at Zihuatanejo beach in Mexico, I like to think they create a holiday resort on the beach where all the workers are ex-cons. They go to prisons and give talks, too. That’s the sequel.

It would have to have a bad apple, though.

That’s one of the recurrent tropes of these kinds of films. You have a guy who can’t change his ways, and gets sucked back into that life of crime.

You say with that with tongue-in-cheek, but it would definitely be a hugely popular movie.

I think we’ll call it Zihuatanejo Hope, something like that. We’ve written this together – I’ll start work on it soon.

Not sure I had much to do with it, to be fair. Just touching on your other roles, people might know you from London’s Burning, a television drama based in a fire station in the 1990s. How do you reflect upon your role in that now?

I have very fond memories of it. There was often a parental guidance warning, because it got graphic. In those days it was quite challenging to see this on television. It also taught people not to iron your clothes, cook, and have a fag at the same time. All done in a subtle, educational way.

People liked my character, because I got well known for being the decent family man.

There were more untrustworthy firefighters in the pack, but Recall was a straight down the line guy. He even lost his wife because he’d sooner work for the London fire brigade. That was actually a bit over the top, I thought. It illustrates the kind of guy he is, though.

The Shawshank Redemption, The Hawth, Crawley, Monday, October 10 to Saturday, October 15 7.30pm (2.30pm matinee on Weds and Sat), from £25, 01293 553636