The career of the former Labour leader Neil Kinnock might soon be taking a remarkable turn. He is lined up to portray fellow Welshman Aneurin Bevan in a new play about the NHS from the celebrated theatre company Out of Joint.

The juicy gobbet of information emerges during my interview with Out of Joint’s artistic director Max Stafford-Clark. “That’s the first time I have told anybody,” he says. “You have an exclusive.”

Lord Kinnock is firmly lined up for the actors’ workshops planned in the company’s trademark style to assist in the preparation of the script for This May Hurt a Bit. It is being written by Max’s playwright wife Stella Feehily, who is sitting in on our interview. The two are optimistic that Kinnock will get the acting bug and stay on to figure in the finished production.

But this is work in prospect. Today we meet to talk about one of Max’s key projects of the past, Timberlake Wertenbaker’s Our Country’s Good, which Out of Joint are reviving.

The play dates back to 1988 when Max was already nine years into his long stint as artistic director of London’s Royal Court. By then, he had established a reputation as a principal purveyor of cutting-edge new drama with such plays as Terry Johnson’s Insignificance and Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls. He recalls its genesis vividly.

In New York for the production of a later Churchill play, Serious Money (“which it was clear wasn’t going to work here”), he whiled away his spare time at the Algonquin Hotel reading Thomas Keneally’s newly published novel The Playmaker. It concerns a production of George Farquhar’s The Recruiting Officer by a group of convicts shipped out from Britain. It was the first play staged in Australia, in 1789.

“The novel was a real page-turner,” says Max, “and the thought occurred to me of doing a stage version of it, which could be presented alongside performances of Farquhar’s play.”

This idea gelled back in London, with Timberlake Wertenbaker recruited to work on the script and workshops under way as it emerged.

Until quite late in the day, Max admits, it seemed unlikely that the company was going to have a hit on its hands, but suddenly everything clicked and the production opened to a first-night ovation.

“The theatre is a cruel mistress,” he says. “You put far more into it than you get out. But this was one of those occasions when it rewarded us. The first performance was a revelation to all of us. Confidence built. It ended in triumph.”

There was a West End transfer, then on to New York, to Los Angeles and to Australia to coincide with its Bicentennial. Max recalls with delight that the Sydney Morning Herald headlined its report: “Daring Poms pinch our history”.

Now rightly judged a classic, the play is performed all over the world. Its message, about the redemptive power of theatre, seems to strike a particular chord with young people, many of whom study the piece on the A-level English course.

The fact that the play is so vocal for the value of theatre makes the timing of the revival important, in Max’s view.

“We are doing the play at a time when the theatre is under threat from the government. Cameron and Osborne’s cuts over three years have done more harm than Mrs Thatcher did to theatre in three terms of office.”

Out of Joint’s annual grant has dropped by more than £100,000, which means it has had to go for bankable revivals – Our Country’s Good scores again here, plus last year’s Top Girls which visited Oxford on its tour – rather than the new work that Max considers so important to the health of the nation.

But, speaking of health, This May Hurt a Bit, is firmly on the horizon, with or without Kinnock. It is one of five new works in preparation for the company, with Max, now 71, showing no inclination at all for retirement.