The actor on his new play, Churchill in Moscow, missing Endeavour — and why drama students should learn to project their voices
How many people, Roger Allam ponders in his soothingly sardonic baritone burr, have played both Winston Churchill and Adolf Hitler on stage? Even for an actor devoted to variety — Arthur Miller once praised him for leaving a plum job in the original Les Misérables to appear in his play The Archbishop’s Ceiling — this is a distinctive double.
Back in 2000 he donned a toothbrush moustache to play the Führer in Albert Speer at the National. Now, at 71, Allam is sticking on his bald cap as Hitler’s nemesis in Churchill in Moscow, a new play rooted in real events.
Weeks before it opens it’s already a hit: the fastest-selling show in the history of the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond, southwest London. Is that the power of Churchill, or is it the appeal of Allam’s fame since he spent a decade playing DI Fred Thursday in the Inspector Morse prequel, Endeavour? He has played leads everywhere from the National to the RSC, from the Old Vic to the West End. His most recent stage job was opposite his friend Ian McKellen in the London run of the two-hander Frank and Percy….