Fagin as played by Mr Bean? March 27, 2008
Posted by Linda in : Musicals, Oliver, news , trackbackWhen the 100 strong cast starts rehearsals for Oliver they’ll be joined by Rowan Atkinson of Mr Bean fame. Actually I’m not being mean about Rowan Atkinson. I’ve got a lot of time for him as a performer and I think he’s an interesting choice for Fagin. As he says:
“In the 1980s I enjoyed doing a lot of West End theatre and since then have been distracted very much by Mr Bean and film-making,”
Of course that was his one-man show Rowan Atkinson In Revue rather than a West end musical. It ran at the Gielgud (once the Globe) before touring the UK and internationally. He won the 1981 Laurence Olivier Award for Comedy Performance of the Year for the show.
Atkinson is not new to the role
Atkinson goes on to say that he’s been thinking of returning to the stage for some time and this is an ideal opportunity. It seems he has played the part of Fagin once before but quite a long way from the West End. In Oxford in fact in a school production! Before you think it, this was no 17 year old Fagin. The production was at his son Benjamin’s £16,000-a-year Summer Fields School in Oxford. They got him for two weeks for rehearsals plus the performances in July 2005. He didn’t charge them a bean 
Sorry couldn’t resist it!
Fagin is a hard role to get right but I think Atkinson might just be the one to manage it. Interesting.
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