Rowan Atkinson will return to the stage next year to play Blackadder, Mr Bean, and other comic characters from across his career in a West End show, Rowan Live. The production, which will have a short run of 30 performances, is set to feature new routines as well as his famous sketches from TV shows including Not the Nine O’Clock News.
““It is 40 years since I last did a comedy sketch show in the West End,” said Atkinson. “I thought it would be fun to perform again the sketches that began it all for myself and [writer] Richard Curtis, and in which my most well-known characters originated, alongside some surprise new material written especially for this show.”
Atkinson and Curtis will collaborate once more with Blackadder writer Ben Elton and its composer Howard Goodall. Atkinson created comedy stage shows with Curtis and Goodall when they were at Oxford University before his phenomenal success on BBC TV in the 1980s with the satirical series Not the Nine O’Clock News and in the various guises of the scheming Edmund Blackadder in the era-hopping historical comedy.
Atkinson had a one-man show in the West End in 1981, at the age of 26, and another one five years later, which led the Guardian’s Michael Billington to report:
““He can look like a damaged cherub, an establishment smoothy, a country vicar, but underneath you glimpse devilry, anarchy and rage.”
Mr Bean, an occasionally ingenious and mostly speechless ignoramus, brought him further success on TV and film in the 90s, proving Atkinson’s gift at physical comedy and even inspiring an animated version. Atkinson perfected the character of Mr Bean on stage in the 1980s before it reached the screen and he incorporated the character in a live comedy tour as well as reprising it for the 2012 London Olympic Games opening ceremony.
