Getting off to a flier

As one of the guests of honour at the inaugural Dandy Dick Theatre Royal Brighton atgtickets.com Fillies' Handicap Stakes, Hodge got to select the best-looking horse before the race. Afterwards, she presented the trophy to the winner, along with co-star Nicholas Le Prevost and the rest of the cast of the play that gave the race its name. She even managed to have a flutter herself. That a handsome steed named National Hope was favoured by Hodge in these pursuits may suggest some kind of insider trading, but she'll never be a millionaire.

"Eleven pounds!" she says proudly of her sudden windfall, echoing her role as the errant sister who puts temptation into the path of her upright vicar brother in Arthur Wing Pinero's classic comedy. Dandy Dick, which was actually written in Brighton in 1887, is the first project out of the traps for a brand new partnership between Ambassadors Theatre Group and Brighton's Theatre Royal, as well some other theatres that could lay claim to being the grandest in the land.

This includes the ATG-run Theatre Royal, Glasgow, where the show tours to next month. Given the ambition of such a venture from the UK's largest commercial theatre operators, Hodge clearly isn't the only one taking a gamble.

ATG's establishment of Theatre Royal Brighton Productions is an initiative designed to develop quality commercial theatre outwith London in a way that can also increase the profile of regional touring beyond the more obvious blockbusters that sometimes clog up the circuit.

Led by Christopher Luscombe, who will direct Dandy Dick, the organisation has also named Maria Aitken and Philip Franks as associate directors. Both have strong track records in Scotland, with Aitken appearing at the Citizens Theatre in some of its most sumptuous productions overseen by Philip Prowse, while Franks directed several shows at Edinburgh's Royal Lyceum Theatre.

To celebrate, the entire Dandy Dick cast and crew have been whisked off on what turns out to be a glorious if not exactly lucrative day at the races. On what is only the second day that the company has been together, such a gathering – trophies and high tea included – is part-marketing tool, part-bonding exercise.

On the coach, everyone is dressed up in their posh-frock finery. All, that is, except ATG Executive Producer and Edinburgh University graduate Adam Speers, who, in the absence of ATG's ebullient joint chief executive and creative director Howard Panter, is clearly going for a Method approach for the occasion by sporting his tie at half-mast while clutching a rolled-up copy of the Racing Post.

"The Theatre Royal in Brighton has such a heritage, and we want to treat that with respect," says Speers. "We also want to take West End-level work out to the regions. There is an appetite for that, and there is an appetite for fun theatre, in Glasgow and Edinburgh as much as anywhere else."

In terms of a flagship production, Dandy Dick couldn't be better.

"I've wanted to do Dandy Dick for some time, but the fact that it was written in Brighton is too good to be true," says Luscombe, "so it's perfect to launch a partnership like this. Classic plays and classic comedy are my bag, and the fact that this play might not be that well known is even better."

As Franks observes: "ATG are trying to do something on a par with what Peter Hall did in Bath, turning around a rather sleepy receiving house into one of the most dynamic producing houses around. I've spent the last six years working in Chichester, and the same thing's happened there. I'd like to be part of something that people can go to on the strength of its name and reputation alone. That way you can take risks.

"In hard times, ambition and risk are the way to go rather than conservatism. Look what happened with the Royal Shakespeare Company in the 1980s. There were cuts all over the place, so they did a huge thing like Nicholas Nickleby. I'd like to think we can do something at that level."

While Franks looks set to work on the third show as part of this new partnership, other commitments in America, where Aitken spends much of her time these days, mean she won't be directing a full show until autumn 2013. In the meantime she will spend two or three weeks this coming September doing workshops and readings of little-known classics which may be developed into full productions.

"This sort of thing happens a lot in America," Aitken explains, "but not that much in the UK. It's good to work informally, with no real end in sight, and it's good to be in something at the very beginning."

One of the scripts Aitken will be looking at is a stage version of Evelyn Waugh's satirical novel set in a funeral parlour, The Loved One. In Aitken's eyes, this is the sort of work that epitomises ATG/Theatre Royal Brighton Productions.

"It's ambitious," she says. "We want to choose plays which aren't obvious crowd-pleasers, but which turn out to be so. There's a moral reason for touring works like this as well as a commercial one, because rep theatres don't exist in the way that they used to."

Aitken and Franks aren't the only Scots connections on the Dandy Dick company. Long before Betrayal, The Life And Loves Of A She Devil and now a regular TV role in Miranda, Hodge's stage career began in 1971 at Edinburgh's Traverse Theatre in an early Howard Barker play, No One Was Saved. Hodge's Dandy Dick co-star Le Prevost, meanwhile, was recently seen in the National Theatre of Scotland's production of Abi Morgan's play, 27.

Further down the Dandy Dick cast is Jennifer Rhodes, a recent graduate of Glasgow Royal Conservatoire's Musical Theatre course. Rhodes's career began at the Royal Lyceum in Edinburgh, where she appeared in Faust and Man Of La Mancha before appearing in two Dave Anderson shows at Oran Mor, A Walk In The Park and Tir Na Nog. More recently Rhodes did a season at Pitlochry Festival Theatre, where she appeared in Bus Stop and An Ideal Husband (but probably didn't win £3.20 as she does at Brighton Races). In Dandy Dick, Rhodes plays Sheba, "the spoilt and really rather silly younger daughter of the Manse," as she puts it.

As the mastermind behind ATG's new partnership with Theatre Royal Brighton Productions, Howard Panter's aims are simple.

"It's about taking quality productions of classic plays that might not have been performed for some time to great cities," he says. "We're trying to reinvigorate regional touring theatre beyond what's become a very London-centric scene."

If Panter is taking a gamble, then the bug is clearly catching.

"I keep using these racing analogies," Hodge says, her winnings still in front of her after expounding on the value of working on great classical plays beyond Shakespeare, Shaw and co. "So if you find one, you should run with it," is her parting shot before being whisked off to the winners enclosure to have her picture taken with a horse. If Dandy Dick and ATG's new partnership with Theatre Royal Brighton Productions pays off, this is something Hodge is probably going to have to get used to.

Dandy Dick, Theatre Royal, Glasgow, August 7-11, www.atgtickets.com