SOHO legend Jeffrey Bernard, drinker, womaniser, racing fanatic, writer and raconteur, was still alive when Keith Waterhouse’s play about his life made its way to the London stage, with the even-more-famous Peter O’Toole in the title role. And he lived for another eight years, flying in the face of medical wisdom and what seemed like a death wish.
Not many professional or non-professional companies have an actor able to recreate this character convincingly, but at Yeovil’s exceptional Swan Theatre, award-winning performer Patrick Knox has long nurtured an ambition to play Bernard, and now, as part of the company’s 50th anniversary mini-festival, that dream has come true. It’s dream casting for the audience too, as Patrick is supported on stage by Sarah Ambrose, Robert Graydon, Sarah Nias and Robert Graydon (who also directs) – all of them memorable actors and award-winners.
Life in London’s risque, louche and dangerous Soho is very different these days from Bernard’s glory days in the 1970s and 80s, and downtown Yeovil has very little in common with the famous centre of entertainment, striptease, bars and artists, but perhaps the fact that the Swan was once a pub gives the evening an added flavour.
The story goes like this. Sacked from his job at Sporting Life and later The Spectator, after years hanging on by a vodka-pickled thread, and thrown out of his latest accommodation, Bernard wakes up on the floor of the gents at the Coach and Horses, and, with only the pub stock for company, and unable to raise the landlord on the phone, he goes through his eventful life, calling to mind many of the eccentric and exotic companions with whom he had enjoyed drunken nights, marriages, affairs, court appearances, hilarious stories, good intentions and general willful self-destruction.
Patrick Knox, with the sophisticated, careless charm of O’Toole and Nighy, brings this oddly alluring character, tottering drunkenly through decades of memories, to a new audience, with his colleagues on stage providing a panoply of supporting characters, each recognisably peopling a life richly lived.
It is on until 16th January, and the festival continues with a murder mystery, a drag show, a film and a recital.
GP-W