When he was young, the actor Hugh Bonneville was ambitious and thrusting, but a bit bumbling, too: no sooner had he filed his elbows to a point and aimed them in the direction of his next big break than something would almost inevitably go a bit wrong. Take, for instance, the time he decided it would indeed be possible to appear in two National Theatre productions on the same evening. He pulled it off, but not without making a minor tit of himself while dressed as a Roman legionnaire.
At the time, Bonneville was appearing on some nights in Lorca’s Yerma in what was then the Cottesloe, the National’s third theatre, and on others in Molière’s School for Wives in the Lyttelton, its second. Naturally, he was thrilled to be in both, for all that his roles were miniature (in the Lorca, he was a flamenco-dancing villager; in the Molière he was only in crowd scenes); it was entirely marvellous to be playing alongside Celia Imrie, Roger Lloyd Pack and Juliet Stevenson. But he was also restless. The real action was going on in the Olivier theatre, where Anthony Hopkins was starring in Antony and Cleopatra.
One day, strolling backstage, he saw a notice: the director of Antony and Cleopatra was hoping to swell the size of his army for Act II, and volunteers were needed. Ooh! Bonneville did a few calculations. Would it be feasible to dash out of, say, Yerma, quickly snuggle into his leather miniskirt and breast plate at the Olivier, march about, and make it back in time for his next scene in the Lorca? Yes, it would! He signed up. On the night, though, there was a minor disaster. He’d missed the afternoon rehearsal (in a matinee, you see), there was a lot of dry ice around, he didn’t know the moves. On stage, he found himself facing in the opposite direction to the rest of Antony’s carefully regimented troops. What the hell to do? At this point, he began to turn very s-l-o-w-l-y, like a figure on a musical box.
When I told my domestic colleague this story – I threw in my own hilarious impression of Bonneville – we collapsed into laughter, and if collapsing into laughter is what you need at the moment, then Playing Under the Piano could be the book for you. As a genre, actors’ memoirs are usually to be treated with utmost suspicion; I find most of them gruesome. (“The notices were superb, and darling Judi/Ken became a friend for life!”) But Bonneville’s is great fun. OK, I could have done without hearing about the decoupage coffee table his wife Lulu made from a cable drum. And I’m still mystified by his proud assertion that he’s “a stickler for credibility within a story”. How exactly does that fit with the bit in Downton Abbey where Matthew Crawley, paralysed from the waist down in the trenches, suddenly regains the use of his legs? But otherwise, I’m giving this a four-star review. It’s like one of Mrs Patmore’s famous pies (sorry, another Downton reference), best scoffed fireside with a good cup of tea on a damp December afternoon.
Bonneville was delighted to have been in Downton Abbey, in which dear, clever Julian Fellowes intentionally blurred the passing of time (his words, not mine). Also, in the Paddington films, in which he is Mr Brown. But his best stories are for the most part not to be found in the accounts of either of these productions. Bonneville believes it’s good for actors to suffer the odd bit of professional humiliation, and he duly dishes up several examples for our delectation, perhaps the finest coming early on when he describes auditioning for what I think was Slow Horses, the Mick Herron adaptation on Apple+ TV. Before the meeting, he has a total nightmare in a public urinal – and to avoid spoilers, I’ll say no more about that here, save to note that the part went to Gary Oldman.
Judi (Dench) and Ken (Branagh) are in his book, and he does seem to like them both a lot. But he’s funny about them, too. He’s in David Edgar’s play Entertaining Strangers with Judi, and one night, she spots the director Howard Davies in the audience. It’s a promenade production, which makes it easy for her to throw a note into his lap, a crumpled missive that reads: “Fancy a shag?” Unfortunately, it isn’t Howard Davies.
Actors are quite naughty and rebellious in their way, and not all of them, moreover, are keen on new-fangled ideas. Told to writhe around and pretend to be “disease” by a movement director on a production of the Restoration play The Virtuoso by Thomas Shadwell, an Irish actor called Finbar Lynch can only say: “No, I’m sorry, I did not join the RSC to be fockin’ pus.” Poor Finbar – though at this point I was laughing as much at our author, a man who, if not entirely delighted to be “undulating” away in his trackie bottoms, is at least going to give it his best shot. I loved Bonneville as Ian Fletcher in the mockumentaries Twenty Twelve and W1A, and now I see why he was so right. In Playing Under the Piano, he hits the same sweet spot, a delicious and endearing mode somewhere between utmost sincerity and utter bafflement.
Playing Under the Piano: From Downton to Darkest Peru by Hugh Bonneville is published by Abacus (£22). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
