Vegas lands Shakespeare role

Johnny Vegas is to play Bottom in a new BBC production of A Midsummer Night's Dream.

It marks the comic’s second dramatic role in the BBC One autumn schedules – as he will also be playing Krook in a new version of Bleak House.

The Shakespeare play has been adapted to take place during a surreal weekend at a holiday camp – which may be ideally suited to Vegas’s warped Butlins entertainer persona.

He will star opposite Oscar-nominated Imelda Staunton and Bill Paterson.

It is one of a number of modern-day adaptations of the Bard’s work in the pipeline, including Macbeth set in the kitchens of a top London restaurant and Dr Who star Billie Piper playing a weathergirl  in version of Much Ado About Nothing, now set in a television newsroom.

Meanwhile in Charles Dickens’s Bleak House – which has been adapted by writer Andrew Davis as a series of instalments with cliffhanger endings – Vegas plays a drunken, sly shop owner/landlord.

Imnpressionist Alistair McGowan also has  part as lawyer, Kenge, while  Gillian Anderson, Denis Lawson, Charles Dance, Pauline Collins and Timothy West also star.

The shows were unveiled as part of BBC One’s £226 million  autumn schedules.

Among the comedy shows in the line-up are

• Green, Green Grass - John Sullivan’s follow-up to Only Fools And Horses that see dodgy car dealer Boycie and his wife Marlene move from Peckham to the Shropshire countryside
• Blessed, Ben Elton’s first sitcom since The Thin Blue Line a decade ago which stars Father Ted’s Ardal O'Hanlon and Mel Geidroyc, from Mel and Sue, as a couple bringing up kids. This had previously been called The Stockholm Syndrome.
• Love Soup, a romantic comedy from One Foot In The Grave creator David Renwick starring  Sting's wife Trudie Styler and Green Wing’s Tamsin Greig.
• The third series of Little Britain
• The return of sitcom The Worst Week of My Life, starring Ben Miller and Alison Steadman, for a second series.

Published: 15 Jul 2005