Become a Member
Theatre

This is how you play Fagin, Rowan

As Rowan Atkinson prepares to play Fagin, Jonathan Pryce, Timothy Spall and Michael Feast tell how they approached the role

December 18, 2008 11:03
Jonathan Pryce, who played Fagin  on the London stage in 1994, did not win universal praise for playing down his Jewishness: “I was being criticised for not being a Jewish stereotype”

ByJohn Nathan, John Nathan

5 min read

Take a train on the London Underground and there he is. His steady stare follows you up and down the escalators.

The face belongs to Rowan Atkinson, who has swapped the role of his gormless creation, Mr Bean, for the cunning Dickensian character Fagin in the latest West End revival of the musical, Oliver!.

This Fagin is not quite the “old shrivelled Jew” as described by his creator, Charles Dickens. Instead of the “villainous-looking and repulsive face, obscured by a quantity of matted hair”, Atkinson’s version appears to sport more of a comb-over than an unwashed mane. And instead of villainy in those eyes, there is something less threatening — mischief, perhaps.

But then the Fagin in the Underground posters does not belong so much to Dickens, or even Atkinson for that matter, as Lionel Bart who in 1957 — 120 years after Oliver Twist was serialised in Bentley’s Miscellany — adapted Dickens’s story into a musical.