Michael Henderson

A man of many parts | 24 May 2018

There’s little Allam hasn’t tackled – from Shakespeare to Les Mis – in his four decades as an actor

A most excellent fellow, Roger Allam. On the stage he brings dignity to all he does, in the noblest traditions of the British theatre. Off it he is a fully paid-up member of the human race, admired by his comrades as a man no less than as an actor. Some mummers, eager to let off steam, occasionally let the side down. Allam is the sort of chap — star and team player — who brings the profession into repute.

Three times a winner of an Olivier award, twice for best actor, he is currently to be found on the West End stage in The Moderate Soprano, David Hare’s touching portrait of John Christie, Etonian, commissioned officer, eccentric and founder of Glyndebourne Festival Opera on the family estate in Sussex. ‘I’ve grown to love the man,’ says Allam. ‘He was an early car enthusiast and in 1911, with a couple of friends from Eton, he took a boat to France, and towed a barge behind with a car in it.’

Christie, bald and shambling, is many a meadow from Fred Thursday, the robust police officer Allam has played in Endeavour for the past six years. His double act with Anton Lesser, cigarette squeezed precisely between fore and middle fingers, has become one of the great television treats of our day. But Allam has covered pretty much everything in his four decades: Shakespeare and Chekhov; Michael Frayn and Tom Stoppard; Cy Coleman and Jerry Herman. He was also, let us not forget, the original Javert in Les Misérables.

He’s an authentic cockney, born in Bow, where his clergyman father had a parish before moving to St Mary Woolnoth in the City, and later to Muswell Hill. Allam was schooled from the age of ten at Christ’s Hospital, near Horsham, ‘an utter misery to begin with’, before he found his feet, acting for the first time at 16 as Guildenstern in Hamlet.

Already a subscriber? Log in

Keep reading with a free trial

Subscribe and get your first month of online and app access for free. After that it’s just £1 a week.

There’s no commitment, you can cancel any time.

Or

Unlock more articles

REGISTER

Comments

Don't miss out

Join the conversation with other Spectator readers. Subscribe to leave a comment.

Already a subscriber? Log in