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The Review - FEATURE
 

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.

• Pete and Dud Come Again at The Venue Leicester Square, 5 Leicester Place, WC2. Tickets available now: Booking from March 2 to June 3. Box Office 0870 899 3335 and at www.seetickets.com
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