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Slapstick star Lee plays it straight
By Tom Teodorczuk, Evening Standard 09.01.07
Lee Evans and Jason Isaacs: playing Dumb
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Comedy star Lee Evans has passionately defended straight drama, which is under increasing pressure in the West End.
The supremacy of blockbuster musicals such as Spamalot, Dirty Dancing and Wicked has led to fears that London audiences are shunning plays.
Recent early closures include Summer And Smoke and Bent while the curtain is coming down on Amy's View and Six Dance Lessons In Six Weeks earlier than scheduled.
But slapstick comedian Lee Evans, whose last West End appearance was in the hit Mel Brooks musical The Producers, is attempting to boost the capital's straight theatre scene by starring in a revival of one of Harold Pinter's classic plays.
Evans is playing alongside Harry Potter actor Jason Isaacs in the 50th anniversary production of Pinter's The Dumb Waiter, which will open next month at the Trafalgar Studios in Whitehall.
Evans told the Standard he would like to see more straight drama in the capital. He said: "There should be room for everything in the West End, be that a blockbuster musical or a good straight play. I would like to see what you get on Broadway - where revenue from theatre is funnelled to new productions and new writers - happen over here.
"I would like new works to be supported and straight plays to be put on. We can only do what we can do [to support stage drama] and that's put a straight play on for the people."
Astonishingly, the No1 play on website Theatre.com's box office chart is The Mousetrap, the Agatha Christie whodunnit first staged in 1952.
But Evans said: "I'm sure that some of my audience don't know Pinter and doing this will be a good chance for them to get acquainted with his work."
Evans said The Dumb Waiter, a rarely performed menacing comedy about the identities of two hitmen, is as timely as when it had its first production at the Hampstead Theatre Club.
"It's a play that's still really relevant to the environment we're living in. I'm not really an actor and this is a different type of comedy to that which I've done before."
Isaacs said: "When we began rehearsals, we noticed giant CCTV cameras on a giant telegraph pole outside the studio so The Dumb Waiter has tremendous resonance for our time.
"Apart from the National Theatre, I have never done London theatre and am terrified but I can't wait to do this play and hopefully Lee feels the same."
Evans said the revival of The Dumb Waiter - which was filmed by the late American director Robert Altman in 1987 starring John Travolta - has the full backing of Pinter himself.
"He sounded pretty excited to hear what we might do with it," he said.
Evans said he had also been cooperating on a film script; a true story about the man who was Hitler's weather forecaster. The Dumb Waiter's director Harry Burton, who has frequently collaborated with Pinter, said: "Too many people take The Dumb Waiter too seriously.
"It's a straight play but there's some great Vaudevillian stuff and I'd like to put back some comedy into his theatre."
• The Dumb Waiter opens at the Trafalgar Studios on 8 February. For tickets, call: 0870 060 6632.
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