WE'LL ALWAYS REMEMBER AN ACTOR'S MOST FAMOUS ROLE...
DOCTOR DOCTOR: Will will always see David Tennant as Dr Who?
Sunday November 23,2008
By Martin Townsend
HAVING worried our way through the economic crisis and the Baby P tragedy the chatter among my pub friends this week turned to some recent departures in the world of showbiz: David Tennant’s decision to quit Dr Who and the death of Reg Varney.
The two events are not obviously related, although it did cross my mind that Varney would have made a great Dr Who (“oi, Butler, get that Tardis out of here”).
However there is a link in that by hanging up his sonic screwdriver while he’s ahead, Tennant is desperately trying to avoid the typecasting in a role that so obviously afflicted Mr Varney and, indeed, several of the other stars of On The Buses.
Many years ago I went to a production of Twelfth Night at the Young Vic theatre near Waterloo. Who should turn up in the role of Malvolio but Varney’s On The Buses nemesis Stephen “Blakey” Lewis?
Bearing in mind that the audience comprised school parties of 14- or 15-year-olds in the main and that, even back then, On The Buses hadn’t graced our TV screens for decades, I didn’t imagine that anyone would view Stephen Lewis as anything other than a veteran Shakesperean actor. How wrong I was.
Barely had Stephen Lewis’s Malvolio stalked on to the stage, his “yellow stockings ever cross-gartered” (and that trademark look of mournful determination on his face) than the first shouts of “Blakey!” issued from the back rows. The cry was taken up all round the arena as teachers urgently shushed their young charges.
If Lewis was disappointed, he didn’t show it. He may have been crumpling inside like a deflated crisp packet but on the surface he was all sharp delivery.
I must admit I left the theatre full of admiration for the younger generation. Who could have imagined that their cultural education was so broad that it embraced a dodgy sitcom about a bus garage that was broadcast when most of them were in nappies?
It also set me thinking about typecasting. What must it be like to be viewed, for ever, as your alter ego? On the one hand it must be immensely reassuring, and flattering, that in a business as insecure and as uncertain as acting you have made your mark, eternally, as Del Boy Trotter, Columbo or Rickaaay from EastEnders.
On the other it must be maddening to be judged by your character’s televisually-exaggerated foibles. Do people always expect Peter Falk, having left a room once, to return a few seconds later and say: “just one more thing?”
Richard Wilson, who played curmudgeonly Victor Meldrew in One Foot In The Grave, seems to have struggled under the weight of that grumpy character and of possibly the most indelible catchphrase of the past 20 years: “I don’t believe it!” At one point, it seems, the poor chap could barely leave his home without a van driver or passerby hollering it at him.
Other performers appear far less bothered about typecasting though. David Suchet relishes his long association with the penguin-like Poirot and it hasn’t stopped him playing some meaty roles elsewhere, most notably as the tyrannical shyster in Trollope’s The Way We Live Now.
Tony “Baldrick” Robinson has also said he never tires of people parroting “I have a cunning plan” at him, obviously mindful that the most cunning part of playing Rowan Atkinson’s browbeaten servant and sidekick in Blackadder was the varied amount of TV presenting work it brought him.
Reg Varney’s eventual return to the small screen was in 1976 as a Billingsgate fish porter in a lousy TV series. Tennant’s first role after Dr Who was in an achingly upmarket RSC production of Hamlet, a gig that took him as far as possible from the shiny world of Daleks and Cybermen.
It makes no difference, though; if the role in which an actor made their name is vivid enough it doesn’t matter whether it was in a feature film or a Halifax TV advert. We, the public are not going to forget it.
A couple of years back I bumped into Lord (Richard) Attenborough at Chelsea’s football ground, where he is a director. I introduced myself and then floundered to make some sort of compliment about his film career. Gandhi was too obvious, I felt, and he directed rather than starred in it. Finally I blurted out: “I thought you were really good as Pinky in Brighton Rock.”
He had the manners not to look too disappointed at my choice but I realised, straight away, how crass it must have sounded. As my wife remarked later: “You meet one of Britain’s finest actors and the only role you mention is one he played 50 years ago!”
