Contrasting characters

Mary Wakefield talks to Roger Allam and discovers that he thinks acting is only a game

As I meet Roger Allam’s eye, in the bar area of Shakespeare’s Globe, I feel a lurch of dread. I love Roger Allam. I’ve held a torch for him since the mid-Eighties, when he starred in Les Mis as the original and best Inspector Javert — but the look in his eye today is one of profound boredom. It bodes badly.

You must be in the middle of rehearsals [for Henry IV Part 1] I say, brightly. ‘Yes.’ He looks out of the window at the glittering Thames. It must be difficult to do interviews then — do you still feel in character as Falstaff? ‘No. Not really.’ Roger Allam is, everyone says, a nice man. He’s certainly talented: one of the most versatile actors around. He’s played Hitler (‘It’s a matter of getting the eyebrows right’); a drag artist (for which he won an Olivier award); a royal retainer (in The Queen, opposite Helen Mirren).