There’s a lot of death in Hugh Bonneville’s autobiography, PLAYING UNDER THE PIANO. Family, friends, colleagues fall off the twig, but that’s life, in’it? But there’s a lot of love in the book, too, and laughter, great whopping whirls of it.
As in life, as on the stage, there is comedy and tragedy, and the recollections, reminiscence and palpable talent of a gifted raconteur are riveting.
As Hugh says in the introduction of his book, “I am one of the luckiest actors I know. I have managed to keep working since 1986 in theatre, radio, television and film, but beyond turning up on time and not punching the director if you can possibly help it, I have no great tips of the trade to impart. This isn’t a manual or a map, it’s a series of snapshots I’ve taken along the way.”
These snapshots are sharp, intrinsically focused, well framed and brilliantly illustrative of a career that has been wide and varied. Bonneville has proved himself a capable performer and here he shows he’s no slouch as a writer.
To those who have come late to the Bonneville bounty, only discovering him in Downton Abbey or the Paddington films, PLAYING UNDER THE PIANO brings his early career out from under the radar in quite the most readable, endearing and entertaining way.
Joining the National Youth Theatre in 1980, Hugh had no thought of becoming a professional actor. His passion was the theatre, but he was still playing under the piano, tentatively peeking out. He confides that he had no idea that he could do what he loved for a living.
Thankfully he did and he shares the struggles and setbacks, the trials and triumphs of a show business life.
Small roles in big films produce just as many alluvial anecdotes as the bigger, starring gigs, as he dishes out morsels on being in a Bond film, Tomorrow Never Dies and appearing in Kenneth Branagh’s Frankenstein.
The chapter, A Brit in Hollywood, gives credence to William Goldman’s decree that Nobody Knows Anything, a phrase that covers everything from the startling incompetence of some of those in charge to the impossibility of predicting which scripts might become a hit.
In So That’s All Good, he gives an hilarious account of encountering BBC commissionaires, funny to the point of Kafkaesque frustration.
Enlightening, entertaining and effervescent, PLAYING UNDER THE PIANO is no lazy luvvie showbiz kiss and tell, but a deliciously witty and disarmingly honest, heart warming and heart breaking odyssey. You’ll laugh till you cry and cry till you smile.
PLAYING UNDER THE PIANO by Hugh Bonneville is published by Abacus Books.