Following the success of last year’s Johnson & Boswell, smarty-pants comedians Simon Munnery, Miles Jupp and writer Stewart Lee regrouped for this year’s Elizabeth & Raleigh, bringing Munnery’s alarming-looking Elizabeth I into conflict with Jupp’s besotted Walter Raleigh.
Was a follow-up to Johnson & Boswell something you wanted to do from the start?
We all wanted to do it, so we suggested some characters to Stewart and he went down this route. I suggested the Beverley Sisters – it would be tricky to stage, what with there being three of them and just two of us, but that would sort of be the joke.
Were you worried it might come across a little too like the second series of Blackadder?
I don’t know, probably. Stewart went back to original sources, the poetry and letters of Raleigh and Elizabeth, and then he ignored them. He just completely wrote his own stuff, added some of my jokes from an act I used to do and mangled it into a piece.
Beneath all the gags, is it fair to say the script is trying to say something quite profound about the nature of power?
Yes, we’ve been arguing about that. On tour, it’ll be longer than the version we did at the Edinburgh Fringe this summer. There’ll be an interval and some extra scenes. It will change, there’s a bit more drama and poetry to it.
There’s a lot of make-up involved. How is the whole dragging up thing for you?
I tell you, I scrape it off fast as I can at the end. I don’t mind putting it on, but the worst bit is the next day when I pull out bits of white stringy stuff from my tear ducts.
Would you be offended if I said you made a pretty terrifying woman?
Thank you very much. But I make a very pleasant man.
Tue-Wed Sep 9-10, Tobacco Factory, Raleigh Road, Southville, Bristol. 8pm, £12, £8 concs. Tel: 0117 902 0344. www.latebutlive.com
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Genghis McKahn, Guardian.co.uk
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