{"id":415,"date":"2008-12-28T10:22:33","date_gmt":"2008-12-28T09:22:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tonenoir.co.uk\/?p=415"},"modified":"2016-11-26T17:39:43","modified_gmt":"2016-11-26T17:39:43","slug":"blackadder-goes-forth-to-the-west-end","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.blackadderhall.com\/?p=415","title":{"rendered":"Blackadder Goes Forth to the West End"},"content":{"rendered":"

A week in the life of Rowan Atkinson. On Christmas Day, he and his wife Sunetra slipped quietly into a school in Kennington, south London, to bring some cheer to 2,000 troubled children brought together by the charity Kids Company. The comedian\u2019s eyes welled up with tears, said one witness.<\/p>\n

That night, Atkinson was interviewed for a BBC1 documentary celebrating 25 years of the comedy classic Blackadder. Looking ill at ease in the role of Rowan Atkinson, he made the surprising disclosure that there was at least one episode of Blackadder Goes Forth he had never seen until he happened to find it on his in-flight entertainment. \u201cI\u2019m not a great laugher, sadly,\u201d he admitted, \u201cbut I might have sniggered at it, which was my way of saying that was very funny.\u201d<\/p>\n

And yesterday he was due on stage for two preview performances of the musical Oliver!, produced by Cameron Mackintosh at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. It is testimony to his status as king of British comedy that, with little pedigree of stage acting and less singing, he is set to become the biggest attraction in London\u2019s West End as the Jewish miser, Fagin. Unlike Alec Guinness in the controversial 1948 screen adaptation of Oliver Twist, Atkinson does not wear a prosthetic nose.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the thing people will be most surprised about is the complexity of the character,\u201d Rupert Goold, the production\u2019s director, told the Observer. \u201cI\u2019m sure they expect him to be funny, but he\u2019s delivered something that is really complex. Like Shylock, it\u2019s one of those parts that you\u2019d have a problematic relationship with because it\u2019s been used as a rod to beat Jewish identity with. You can\u2019t shy away from that. In the last preview I saw, Rowan had lost a little bit of his Jewish accent and I wanted that to come back because I don\u2019t think it is an unsympathetic portrayal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Seldom has a performer been as inscrutably determined as Atkinson to let his work do the talking. An appearance on ITV1\u2019s This Morning sofa became tortuous whenever the actor was asked a remotely personal question. He once refused to tell a journalist how many children he has. On another occasion, the Observer approached him at a party with an innocuous question about Blackadder; after an excruciatingly long pause, he replied: \u201cNo comment.\u201d Even on Blue Peter, he appeared as Mr Bean rather than himself. His private persona, says Goold, is sometimes \u201clike a ghost\u201d.<\/p>\n

Another Blackadder documentary, on the G.O.L.D. channel earlier this year, featured interviews with its writers Richard Curtis and Ben Elton and cast members including Robinson, Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, Tim McInnerny and Miranda Richardson. All the old gang, in fact, except Atkinson.<\/p>\n

Why the reticence? The evidence suggests that there is no great enigma, no great cliche about inner turmoil and the tears of a clown. Atkinson, who turns 54 next week, simply seems to lack the showbiz gene. He has a private hinterland of fast cars and family and the key to his brilliance may be that he sees it as nothing more and nothing less than a job. Goold added: \u201cHe\u2019s got something that\u2019s really important in comedy, which is taste, partly because he\u2019s a very self-contained private man, so you don\u2019t feel he\u2019s somebody who\u2019s desperate for a laugh. You get the sense that he would have the greatest 12 year old boy gift ideas<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u2018Some comedians are so eager to have you love them that they\u2019ll push that to the nth degree, whatever that takes, whereas with Rowan you feel he enjoys it like he enjoys the purr of the engine of one of his beloved cars. It\u2019s a personal experience for him and that means he\u2019s indifferent to vulgarity and cheap laughs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tony Robinson, whose Baldrick tormented Blackadder with every \u201ccunning plan\u201d, echoes the sentiment. \u201cHe\u2019s one of the few mega performers who genuinely has a full and fulfilling life away from showbusiness,\u201d he said last week. \u201cIn my experience, I can\u2019t tell you how rare that is. He has a beautiful wife and family and good on him. Yet he remains for me the consummate comedy performer of his generation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Robinson added: \u201cHe\u2019s a very shy man, so it\u2019s not like the first time that you meet someone such as Rik Mayall or Mel Smith where you\u2019ve overwhelmed by the force of their personality. When he\u2019s not working, you are unlikely to realise that he\u2019s in the room, but as soon as he starts, all attention focuses on him, partly because of this extraordinary supreme talent that he\u2019s got.\u201d<\/p>\n

Performing was not in his blood. Atkinson was the third son growing up on a 400-acre farm and attended Durham\u2019s Chorister School aged 11, where he was teased by fellow pupils who thought he looked like an alien. Two years above him was Tony Blair, described by the school\u2019s headmaster as \u201coutgoing\u201d compared with Atkinson, who was \u201cshy with a slight stutter\u201d. He went to Newcastle University and studied engineering, before arriving at Queen\u2019s College, Oxford, for an MSc in engineering science.<\/p>\n

When he turned up at the Oxford sketch writing group, he reminded fellow student Richard Curtis of a cushion: sitting on a chair and saying nothing. Curtis recalled: \u201cI thought he was a stuffed toy because he didn\u2019t say anything for the first three meetings – just a curiously shaped object in the corner. Then just when we were trying to decide what the material should be, and we\u2019d all been handing in sketches for months, Rowan actually stood up and did two absolutely astonishing sketches.\u201d<\/p>\n

Atkinson dazzled at the Edinburgh Festival and toured with Angus Deayton as his straight man. At Amnesty International\u2019s benefit, The Secret Policeman\u2019s Ball, in 1979 he performed a hilarious sketch as a headmaster addressing a room of schoolboys. He then joined Mel Smith, Griff Rhys Jones and Pamela Stephenson in the vanguard of alternative comedy, the sketch series Not the Nine O\u2019Clock News. Two years later, he became the youngest performer to have a one-man show in the West End.<\/p>\n

Then came four series as Edmund Blackadder in the sprawling comical chronicle of English history now regarded as a gold-plated classic, ranking with or even surpassing Dad\u2019s Army and Fawlty Towers. By the final series, set in the First World War trenches, Atkinson found in the character a cynical antihero worthy of Catch-22\u2019s Yossarian. The climax touched greatness with Blackadder pretending to be mad in a failed bid to get out of the maddest situation in history.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just remember feeling the impending doom over my character,\u201d Atkinson said. \u201cI remember feeling this strange knot in the pit of my stomach. It was the first time as an actor that I had felt the predicament of my character. I was going to die at the end of the week.\u201d<\/p>\n

It has since been observed that the world is divided into two irreconcilable schools: fans of Blackadder and fans of Atkinson\u2019s next manifestation, Mr Bean. The former, which started on BBC2, was Oxbridge satire with clever wordplay in the tradition of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore and Monty Python. The latter, on ITV, was physical humour with minimal dialogue in the tradition of Benny Hill. It has shown a similar ability to cross cultural boundaries, gaining audiences in a hundred countries. The 1997 film version, Bean, took \u00a3152m to become the most lucrative British film of all time and was followed by Mr Bean\u2019s Holiday last year.<\/p>\n

Atkinson, whose Eurosceptic brother Rodney is a former UK Independence Party candidate, made a rare foray into politics when he campaigned successfully against the government\u2019s proposals to outlaw \u201cincitement to religious hatred\u201d, arguing that they would in effect criminalise the telling of Catholic, Jewish or Muslim jokes. He has had a mild flop, with the BBC TV series The Thin Blue Line and made several Hollywood appearances, although he once opined that the only film he was really proud of being in was Four Weddings and a Funeral<\/p>\n

His 15 per cent stake in the film and TV company Tiger Aspect has helped generated a personal fortune estimated at anywhere from \u00a365m to \u00a3100m. On a typical day, he is likely to be relaxing at his Chelsea townhouse or driving go-karts round the tennis court of his country pile, a former rectory in the Oxfordshire village of Waterperry.<\/p>\n

The actor\u2019s great extravagance is collecting vintage cars and driving them at events such as the Goodwood Festival of Speed. John Lloyd, his long-time producer, once summed Atkinson up thus: \u201cHe is certainly not a workaholic. He once said to me that he wasn\u2019t bothered about going into showbusiness, but it was the only way he could find of affording the cars he wanted. I think that\u2019s why, in interviews, he doesn\u2019t think his private life is anybody\u2019s business. There\u2019s no article to be written airing his dirty laundry. He\u2019s just a blameless family guy.\u201d<\/p>\n

So don\u2019t expect Atkinson to treat the first-night reviews of Oliver!, including his ability to sing \u201cYou\u2019ve got to pick-a-pocket or two, boys\u201d eight times a week, as a matter of life and death. But equally, expect something special from a man who, like the best of wits, has nothing to declare but his genius.<\/p>\n

The Atkinson Lowdown<\/p>\n

Born: Rowan Sebastian Atkinson in Gosforth, near Newcastle, on 6 January 1955, the youngest of three sons of farmers Eric and Ella Atkinson. He married Sunestra Sastry, a make-up artist on Blackadder, at the Russian Tea Room in New York in 1990; they have two children, Lily and Benjamin.<\/p>\n

Best of times: Critically, Blackadder, in which Atkinson coined immortal comic lines such as: \u201cHe\u2019s madder than Mad Jack McMad, the winner of last year\u2019s Mr Madman Competition.\u201d Commercially, Mr Bean, in which his rubber face and elastic body earned comparisons with Chaplin, Keaton and Laurel.<\/p>\n

Worst of times: A 1986 attempt to crack Broadway ended three weeks after New York Times critic Frank Rich condemned his \u201ctoilet humour\u201d. In 2001, the pilot of a Cessna plane in which Atkinson and his family were flying from Mombasa to Nairobi passed out, but Atkinson took the controls and saved the day.<\/p>\n

What he says: \u201cSometimes I wonder what I\u2019m doing in showbusiness. It\u2019s as though I wandered in accidentally and there\u2019s no way out. People who meet me think, \u2018What a miserable git.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

What they say: \u201cRowan has not one ounce of showbiz in his life. It is as if God had an extra jar of comic talent and for a joke gave it to a nerdy, anoraked northern chemist.\u201d Stephen Fry, Blackadder co-star and best man at Atkinson\u2019s wedding.<\/p>\n

Source: Guardian Unlimited<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A week in the life of Rowan Atkinson. On Christmas Day, he and his wife Sunetra slipped quietly into a school in Kennington, south London, to bring some cheer to 2,000 troubled children brought together by the charity Kids Company. The comedian\u2019s eyes welled up with tears, said one witness. That night, Atkinson was interviewed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cast-crew"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p54TBn-6H","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":422,"url":"https:\/\/www.blackadderhall.com\/?p=422","url_meta":{"origin":415,"position":0},"title":"Rowan Atkinson to revisit Blackadder","author":"admin","date":"24 November 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Thanks to long-standing, much respected Blackadder Hall visitor, nay part-of-the-furniture, John D. for spotting this gem. Rowan Atkinson has granted his first in-depth interview about his iconic Blackadder role in Tiger Aspect\u2019s second documentary on the classic BBC sitcom. Atkinson will describe his personal experience of his involvement in the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Cast & Crew"","block_context":{"text":"Cast & Crew","link":"https:\/\/www.blackadderhall.com\/?cat=2"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":505,"url":"https:\/\/www.blackadderhall.com\/?p=505","url_meta":{"origin":415,"position":1},"title":"Leeds plan to reunite Blackadder cast","author":"admin","date":"14 March 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"It has been nearly 20 years since they starred in the classic TV sitcom, but now the cast of Blackadder Goes Forth could soon be reunited; by Leeds City Council. It is inviting Rowan Atkinson and the rest of the Blackadder gang, including Tony Robinson who played his turnip-loving sidekick\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Cast & Crew"","block_context":{"text":"Cast & Crew","link":"https:\/\/www.blackadderhall.com\/?cat=2"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":407,"url":"https:\/\/www.blackadderhall.com\/?p=407","url_meta":{"origin":415,"position":2},"title":"Blackadder Remastered – The Ultimate Edition","author":"admin","date":"20 October 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"It has been quite a while since I last updated Blackadder Hall; to be honest, there has been hardly anything of great worth to write about so the site has been ticking along on its own for the past couple of years. 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The programme will be called \u201cBlackadder Rides Again\u201d - a title which will no doubt confuse viewers; leading them to think that its an actual one-off\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Cast & Crew"","block_context":{"text":"Cast & Crew","link":"https:\/\/www.blackadderhall.com\/?cat=2"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":638,"url":"https:\/\/www.blackadderhall.com\/?p=638","url_meta":{"origin":415,"position":4},"title":"Blackadder goes Biblical","author":"admin","date":"28 January 1998","format":false,"excerpt":"Daily Mirror - January 29th 1998. Blackadder Series 5 - Rowan returns as TV Edmund but now he\u2019s the 13th disciple of Jesus EXCLUSIVE By CHRIS HUGHES Funnyman Rowan Atkinson is bringing Blackadder back to life - as a scheming 13th disciple of Jesus. 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