Roger Allam
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Roger Allam has a first-class CV, ranging far and wide across all dramatic disciplines: blistering psychodrama (Blackbird, winner of the 2007 Olivier Award for best play); musicals (City of Angels in its critically acclaimed, commercially unsuccessful U.K. premiere); drag revue (Privates on Parade, for which he won the second of his two Oliviers to date); and, courtesy the current, and delicious, Boeing-Boeing, flat out farce. At age 53, Allam is the first to admit how "strange" (in his words) it seems that he was the very first Javert in Les Miserables over 20 years ago. Passing the theatre where the musical is still running, he laughs, "It looks like a youth project." But it's altogether appropriate that Allam should look forward, not back, especially at a time that finds him more in demand than ever, his workload ceaseless enough to encompass a long National Theatre and then West End run as Willy Brandt in Democracy, an entry as high-flown as his participation opposite Ian McKellen's Widow Twankey in the Old Vic pantomime Aladdin was comparatively, deliberately rude. Boeing-Boeing is not so much rude as raucously funny, with Allam holding the play's comic epicentre as a successful French architect, Bernard, who is juggling three fiancées—all of them air hostesses, each for a different airline. But lest he seem the unique province of select theatrical ventures, Allam also hit the big time this past year, playing the right-hand man to HRH Elizabeth II in Stephen Frears' much-loved film The Queen, which was amongst the first topics of conversation when Allam and I spoke late one recent morning, the movie's Oscar success (six nominations, one win for Dame Helen Mirren as Best Actress) very much lingering in the air.
Did you stay up through the night to watch this year's Oscars?
I would have loved to, but I wouldn't want then to be woken up by my small son at 7am. [Allam and Rebecca Saire, the actress, have two boys, aged two and nearly seven.]
It must be fantastic, though, to be part of something that has had such an impact—not least because of the knock-on effect.
To be honest, I've not been aware of that yet. I was working when The Queen opened, doing Pravda in Chichester [inheriting Anthony Hopkins's original role], and went straight from that into two tellies, so I’ve been pretty busy. Then I knew I was doing Boeing-Boeing, so decided to take some weeks off and things just sort of went on, really, in the way that they do. I haven't been aware of any particular effect that The Queen has had, other than people saying it was good and that they liked it, and I mean people in the business as well as the public—which is nice.
Of course, compared to the theatre, where you get feedback every night, film is always such an unknown. When you're making a movie, who knows how it will turn out?
I mean, I think we all thought it was going to be good, you know; it was a good script and a very good company of actors. But I don't think we knew it was going to be big—or this big, anyway. I t wasn't even certain at the beginning that it was going to go on general release; there was talk of it being on TV.
[AD]Did you meet with anyone at the Palace as part of your research?
No. I don't think it was smiled on while we were making it. Who knows, it may be smiled on now, I just don't know. I had a very good speech consultant, Penny Dyer, and that was very, very useful because my instinct when we did the read-through was to make (the character) very, very posh—which wasn't quite right.
The film's success adds to the sense of you being happily ubiquitous.
I'm a rash; you can't get rid of me. [Laughs.] It's good, of course, to be kept busy and also what I've always liked is to do a variety of things and not get stuck in any particular groove for so long. It's been very good going from The Queen to Blackbird to the panto to TV's The Thick of It. It's the sort of thing I've always enjoyed doing, almost neurotically so. It's as if I'm saying, “Oh, I better do something completely different.'”
Roger Allam in Boeing-Boeing
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And now you're doing a 1960s farce by Marc Camoletti, translated by Beverley Cross, which is something else again. How is that shaping up?
It's early to say, really. We're sort of just getting into our stride. What you do discover is that, generally speaking, audiences are very good, like they were on the press night, and you can surf along on the top of them. And then you get an audience that's sticky and doesn't laugh so easily. Plays like this one rely on audience response to keep the energy going when in fact there's not a lot of substance—of actual play—beneath you.
It must be a very heady experience when everything works as one.
When that does happen, we can all have fun together; it has been said that the audience is like a great bear that rolls over and wants to have its tummy tickled. I'd never been in a farce before, so that was part of the attraction. But I had worked on Art with Matthew [Warchus, the director]—I was in it twice, in fact: the third and fifth casts, playing two different roles, first Serge, then Marc—and really enjoyed it. It was still relatively early on, and the first time Matthew completely re-rehearsed us in. I'd never worked with Mark [Rylance, his co-star], and he was already on board, so we just sort of read it together. I was just laughing and crying with laughter already, and the point was that we weren't being asked to do it for very long. I just thought, this will be fun, and I haven't got anything else to do for the moment. So for practical reasons, it meant I could relax.
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