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Kevin Bishop
Kevin Bishop and Tom Goodman-Hill as Pete and Dud
The real Peter Cook and Dudley Moore |
Kevin and Tom cook up Moore comic fun
For actor Kevin Bishop playing
Dudley Moore on stage was a real eye-opener, writes Peter Gruner
FOR Islington actor Kevin Bishop the saddest part of playing
Dudley Moore was the discovery that the late great comic actor
was haunted by a terrible inferiority complex.
Whereas his taller, more confident and cynical partner, late
Hampstead resident Peter Cook, went to public school and was
from an affluent background, Dudley was a working class scholarship
boy from Dagenham.
And Dudley learned to be cuddly at an early age to cope with
the fact he was born with a club foot and in his mother’s
eyes he wasn’t perfect.
Kevin, 25, from Newington Green, who is playing Dudley on the
West End stage next month, said he believes this deep-rooted
sadness turned the consummate classical pianist into a clown.
The actor is reprising Pete and Dud Come Again, the play about
the often-tense relationship between Peter Cook and Dudley Moore,
which triumphed at last year’s Edinburgh festival.
The new extended show tells the story of the comic duo’s
rise and fall in the 1960s and 1970s from Moore’s perspective.
Cook was the brilliant wit who revolutionised satire but whose
ambition, by his own admission, abruptly vanished soon after
achieving fame.
Dud was the musical virtuoso who rose above his unassuming upbringing
to woo and then win the heart of Hollywood. On stage and off,
it was a partnership defined by love and hate, which has inspired
many works of biographical fact and fiction.
Kevin said he feels a certain kinship towards his Dudley character,
being also from a relatively ordinary background and a comprehensive
schoolboy, originally from Orpington, Kent. A character actor
since a child on BBC TV’s Grange Hill, he never went to
drama school or university.
“The hardest part was learning to do Dudley’s rather
nasally posh boy accent,” said Kevin. “But then you
realised that the poor bloke would have acquired this phoney
voice at Oxford University in order to hide his working-class
background from the toffs.”
Kevin, a great fan of Pete and Dud’s comedy, was moved
to tears by the story of Dudley’s childhood. “Dudley
was born with a club foot and a withered leg which didn’t
please his mother. According to his biography she had to be
persuaded to take her son home to the Dagenham council house
where she lived with her husband Jock, a railway worker.”
Throughout his boyhood Dudley had to endure several painful
operations on his left leg which was half an inch shorter than
the other, and his relationship with his mother haunted him
all his life.
“She found it difficult to show him the affection he craved,”
Kevin said.
But Dudley’s mother fought for him to attend grammar school,
Dagenham County High, despite the headmaster’s belief that
he would be better off in an establishment that could deal with
his physical disability.
At school, he had to wear shorts that exposed his deformity
and was constantly bullied about his leg.
He eventually discovered a defence mechanism by making his peers
laugh. Playing the clown turned him from a victim into one of
the most popular boys at the school.
Moore’s musical talent won him a scholarship to the Guildhall
School of Music where he played the piano. He taught himself
the organ at his local church and had to adapt one of his mother’s
shoes for his deformed left leg in order to play it. To the
immense pride of his mother, the boy from Essex won an organ
scholarship to Oxford University.
The play by Chris Bartlett and Nick Awde follows the rise and
dramatic fall of the legendary comedy partnership.
The story follows Dudley’s return from Hollywood in 1982
after his Oscar nomination for Arthur in which he acted with
Liza Minnelli and Sir John Gielgud, and his appearance on a
primetime chat show. Through a combination of flashbacks and
sketches, their dream showbiz marriage is revealed as a divorce
waiting to happen, starting with their first meeting on Beyond
the Fringe.
Tom Goodman-Hill, recently seen at the National Theatre and
the Donmar, appears as Peter Cook. Kevin and Tom have recently
been seen on our screens in the first series of hit Channel
4 sketch show Spoons, and individually they have a formidable
list of recent comedy credits to their names, including The
Office, Peep Show and Love Soup.
They are joined by Alexander Kirk as chat show host Tony Ferguson,
and award-winning comedy double act Colin and Fergus (Colin
Hoult and Fergus Craig) who play Jonathan Miller and Alan Bennett.
The play is directed by Owen Lewis, whose recent London credits
include How To Lose Friends And Alienate People and Got To Be
Happy.
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