Merseyside comic Les Dennis plays Shakespeare with 'riffs, ruffs and riotous parties'

  • Les Dennis talks 'riffs, ruffs and riotous parties' with ITV Granada Reports correspondent Ann O'Connor.

Comedian Les Dennis fell in love with Twelfth Night as an A level student, seeing a production with Judi Dench and Donald Sinden at the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Five decades later, the Liverpool-born actor is fulfilling an ambition to appear in the Bard's comedy back home on Merseyside at Shakespeare North Playhouse in Prescot.

"No wonder I was bowled over," he laughs. "I thought then, I want to do this.

"I'd already started doing the working mens' clubs around Liverpool and the North West, but I thought I want to do Shakespeare one day".

Les Dennis hosted ITV's Family Fortunes from 1987 to 2002 Credit: ITV

A successful career in stand-up comedy saw Les, who was born in Garston, become the host of ITV game show Family Fortunes for more than ten years from 1987.

But while he was filming the hugely popular programme for three weeks of the year, he would then go off to work on stage plays at places like the now-closed Oldham Coliseum.

Now aged 70, he's fulfilling that ambition to appear in Twelfth Night with a production that Shakespeare North Playhouse describes as 'injected with riffs, ruffs and riotous partying'.

He plays Malvolio, the uptight killjoy who is made a fool of by wearing yellow stockings wrongly thinking it will attract Olivia.

The theatre company producing the play, Not Too Tame, were responsible for Shakespeare North's debut production in 2022 Midsummer Night's Dream which received rave reviews.

Director Jimmy Fairhurst says this Twelfth Night has a rock festival vibe, with the main characters playing rock stars and Malvio as the jobs-worth tour manager.

"There's going to be live music, there's going to be comedy, pathos, chaos. People can come and go to the bar as often as they like," he says.

It is all part of trying to get those who wouldn't normally come to theatre to take a look.

Jimmy Fairhurst says ten thousand people came to see Not Too Tame's Midsummer Night's Dream, and one thousand of those said they had never been to a theatre before.

Tickets are on sale now for the performances that run from 7-29 June.

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