Bathurst Brings Life to Telegraph Cartoon Alex???

Robert Bathurst finishes his run in Steve Thompson’s political comedy Whipping It Up at the New Ambassadors on 16 June, but he may well be back in the West End in the blink of an eye, swapping his Whip’s tie for City pin-stripes. He’s signed up to bring to life Alex, the Daily Telegraph’s long-running comic strip about an obnoxious corporate financier, initially a parody of the yuppie stereotype pervasive when the strip was first published in the London Daily News in 1987. The stage adaptation – which is being written by the cartoon’s creators Charles Peattie and Russell Taylor – has been on the cards for some time (See The Goss, 18 Nov 2004), but has been slimmed down to a one-man show, which will be directed by Improbable Theatre’s Phelim McDermott (Shockheaded Peter) with high-tech designs that allow Bathurst to interact with others in his cartoon world. The play’s story concerns Alex's increasingly desperate attempts to juggle his job, his marriage and his social life as crisis hits all three and threatens to ruin him.

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