Robin Williams Plays Peter Sellers on Stage???

Late British comedian Peter Sellers has recently been the subject of a major Hollywood release, The Life and Death of Peter Sellers starring Geoffrey Rush, and a stage homage looks to be coming soon too. One of Sellers’ former scriptwriters, John Antrobus, is working on a play about the end of the comedian’s life, when he knew he was going to die. The big-budget production is expected to open first in London in early 2006. Amongst those tipped to play the man himself is Hollywood’s Robin Williams (Good Will Hunting, Mrs Doubtfire, Awakenings, Dead Poets Society). Sellers, who died following heart problems in 1980, became best known internationally as Inspector Clouseau in the Pink Panther films of the 1960s and 70s while, in the UK, he first burst onto the scene in the 1950s with The Goon Show. Notwithstanding interest in Sellers, should the Williams casting come to pass, the Sellers play is likely to hang around longer than Ying Tong, Roy Smiles’ play about fellow Goon Spike Milligan, which closed last month after just five weeks at the West End’s Arts Theatre (See News, 1 Mar 2005).

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