London-based actor Toby Dantzic is unlucky in love. But luckily, it is just an act.

Mr Dantzic, 34, has been playing doctor Thomas Diafoirus, the unsuitable suitor, in Molière’s The Hypochondriac at the Liverpool Playhouse. The play, adapted by the poet Roger McGough, will be touring the UK in the autumn.

The comedy follows hypochondriac Argan as he plans to marry off his daughter to Thomas, thus ensuring he can get his treatment for free. “Thomas subsequently tries to win the girl’s heart by spouting a lot of Latin and Greek but he doesn’t realise how much he is embarrassing himself,” Mr Dantzic tells People. Graduating from Oxford University and then the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, he has made a name for himself in classical theatre.