Martin Barrass joins cast of One Man, Two Guvnors in London (From York Press)

Martin Barrass joins cast of One Man, Two Guvnors in London

10:20am Friday 10th February 2012 in Theatre By Charles Hutchinson

YORK Theatre Royal pantomime stooge Martin Barrass finally has the chance to play a role which was written expressly for him.

No sooner has he finished another season of panto mayhem with Berwick Kaler in The York Family Robinson, than he has travelled to London to begin rehearsals for the next run of the National Theatre production of Richard Bean’s farce One Man, Two Guvnors.

Barrass and Bean are sons of Hull and after the actor appeared in a series of Bean’s plays at Hull Truck, the playwright was taken with the thought of using Barrass in his next writing project.

“I got a call from Richard a year ago,” says Martin. “He said, ‘Do you know the play The Servant Of Two Masters by Goldoni? It’s 250 years old… “I said it was one of my favourites as it had a lot of commedia dell arte physical comedy in it. ‘In that case, would you be interested in appearing in my new version, playing the 87-year-old waiter at The Cricketers’ Arms, who’s had his pacemaker turned up to ten to go up the stairs with the soup terrines?’,” he asked me.

“I said, ‘That’s really kind but’… and he said, ‘No, I think it would really suit you’. I’d really love to do it,’ I said, ‘but I’m already committed to doing the In The Round season at the Theatre Royal’.”

Martin did not think anything more of it, although he did notice “all these wonderful reviews” for Bean’s play, which went on to share the Best Play gong in the Evening Standard awards with another Bean work, The Heretic.

“But then I got another call from Richard, saying, ‘Look, One Man, Two Guvnors is going to Broadway and they’ll need a new cast for London; you could do it this time.

“So I went to meet the National’s artistic director, Nicholas Hytner, and the actor who was playing the part of Alfie the waiter, Tom Eddon, who’s absolutely wonderful and made me so at ease.

“Anyway, when I went in for the audition, Nick [Hytner] said, ‘Right, let’s see some of your physical stuff’, and Tom said, ‘Nick, I don’t think he really needs to do that as he’s in the York Theatre Royal pantomime’.

“I said, ‘Guys, I don’t want you to fall out over this!’. So I did some pratfalls and other physical stuff I’d do at the Theatre Royal.” The part was duly his.

Alfie, the deaf, doddering waiter, suffers in much the same way that Martin is the stooge for Berwick Kaler’s pie-in-the-face antics each winter in York. “He gets hit, gets thrown backwards down the stairs three times, gets stuck in doors, has soup spilled all over him: it’s basically like the Theatre Royal slapstick scene,” says Martin.

During the latter stages of the panto run, Martin attended the read-through for Bean’s play in London. “Richard was there and out of the blue he said, ‘I’m really pleased to have Martin here, the guy I wrote this part for’. I really felt like teacher’s pet,” he says.

One Man, Two Guvnors will run at London’s oldest theatre, the Theatre Royal Haymarket, from March 2 to September 15, and Martin will not be the only face in the production familiar to York and Hull audiences. “Nigel Betts, who, like me, lives in York, will be playing Harry Dangle, the crooked solicitor,” he says.

Martin can reflect on a fulfilling if exhausting 2011, when he appeared in five of York Theatre Royal’s In The Round ensemble productions – The Crucible, My Family And Other Animals, Peter Pan, Forty Years On and Laurel And Hardy – before ending his year as ever by bouncing around the pantomime stage.

“My weight dropped below nine stone – not bad for playing Stan Laurel!” he says. “The most exhausting part was being Nanna the dog in Peter Pan; it was like a furnace inside that costume.”

Nevertheless, 54-year-old Martin loved working in the ensemble company. “I do believe that apart from doing a great play, for me, doing a season of plays with the same actors is what theatre is all about,” says Martin.

Now he is savouring the prospect of switching from one iconoclastic writer to another. “In Berwick’s pantomimes, it’s liberating to know you can go anywhere in his shows, and because he’s such a delightful anarchist anyway, that suits his style of writing,” he says.

“Both Berwick and Richard Bean’s writing styles are muscular; there’s not a lot of fat there, and like Berwick, it’s not always the obvious gag that Richard goes for. That’s why they’re both in a league of their own.”

Come next winter, it will be panto-time once more, when Martin will join Kaler and co for the newly announced Robin Hood And His Merry Mam.

For tickets for One Man, Two Guvnors at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, phone 0845 481 1870 or book online at trh.co.uk/book_omtg.php