Rowan Atkinson plans live comedy return

Comedian to revive sketch format after more than 35 years

Rowan Atkinson is planning a return to the stage for a one-man sketch show.

The comedian, now 70, toured in the Eighties with sidekicks including Angus Deayton and Richard Curtis, who co-wrote the material.

But now – 35 years after his last tour – the Blackadder star is planning a ‘heritage show’ that will mix old sketches and new.

In a major interview with The Times, said: ‘It would be a limited run, I’ve no desire to do a nine-month tour.

‘There is no theatre booked yet. I’d like to do it because not many people have seen me do comedy sketches live: it’s been almost 40 years. And I suppose it appeals to the control freak in me. The autonomy you have as a theatre performer, it’s just you and the audience and you’re in charge.’

Atkinson acknowledged that some material may need to be updated – not just skits such as him playing an Indian waiter – but also a raft of stuffy authority figures that are less prevalent today.

‘We mocked the people that Richard and I found funny at the time, which tended to be establishment figures like vicars,’ he said. ‘They were figures of a certain type who spoke in a certain way. And some of those sketches wouldn’t land now. People would go, ‘Who is that guy? What world does he represent?’ And you have to acknowledge that.’

He added that Curtis would probably not want to play his stooge again, but ‘would be writing and supervising rehearsals. So, yeah, we are thinking of taking a trip down memory lane’.

Atkinson spoke to the newspaper to promote his new Netflix series Man Vs Baby, due out on Thursday.

In the article, the series is described as ‘what Atkinson, his director David Kerr and co-writer Will Davies are doing instead of the fourth Johnny English film’.

The movie was announced last year, but Atkinson admitted he ‘lost faith a little bit’.

However, he did not rule out reviving the project, just as he didn’t quite rule out returning to Mr Bean, saying: ‘I’m not saying never, but it’s certainly not in the realms of my thinking at the moment.’

And of the perennial question of whether Blackadder would return, he added to the consensus that the idea is increasingly unlikely.

‘What’s the point?’ he said. ‘You’d just be desperately trying to reproduce the success of what you’d done decades ago. You’re on a hiding to nothing. The only motivation would be money. But I don’t think that would bring me into the fold.’