The smallest show on earth
Richard Johnson, Radio Times, January 25 1992
Nigel Hawthorne gets back to basics - playing a flea circus ringmaster
The ringmaster of a flea circus may not have the kudos of his counterpart in the big top - but there are just as many dangers, as Nigel Hawthorne discovered in this week's Screen Two: Fleabites.
"It's the most fiendishly difficult thing to do, harnessing a flea," he says. "You have to put a loop of very thin wire round it's body. There's always the chance that the flea will jump away - or that you'll dissect it."
Hawthorne plays Kryst, a Polish ex-patriate who befriends Jason, a young tearaway (Anthony Hill), and instructs him ni the ways of the smallest show on earth. "The diameter of the circus ring is no more than 3ft, so Jason gets an epidiascope to try and enlarge the show for a pub audience, but it goes disastrously wrong."
Hawthorne has been away from television of late, concentrating on acclaimed theatrical productions of Shadowlands and The Madness of George III. "I went off theatre in the 80s," he says. "Television was so much easier. But if you aren't careful, you just go round in a little circle. The only way to stretch yourself is to take challenges and broaden your range."
He reckons he has escaped stereotyping after the huge success of his civil servant Sir Humphrey Appleby in Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister. "If people had seen me only as Sir Humphrey, they would never in a million years have thought of me for Flea Bites. I was jolly lucky that the director, Alan Dossor, had the foresight to see through the supercilious glint. It's nice to break new ground."
