Lloyd Evans
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They gushed, they cheered, they purred, they sighed. When a young Richard Eyre read Trevor Griffiths’s new play Comedians in 1975 he prounounced it ‘great’ on the spot. ‘Trev,’ said Rich, ‘you’re knocking on Chekhov’s door.’ Eyre’s production was picked up by an equally thrilled Peter Hall who transferred it to the National and from there it leapfrogged to Broadway. The director of this star-studded revival, Sean Holmes, read the play at 17 and he, too, was smitten. But were the crimson crushes of youth really justified?
Comedians is set in a Manchester evening class where six stand-up comics are being trained by Eddie Waters, a former star whose ambition has mysteriously faded. The first act introduces us to a suspiciously formulaic cast. There’s an Irish builder called Mick Connor, a Jew in flashy pinstripes called Sammy Samuels, and an Indian with a funny accent called, wait for it, Mr Patel. The only cliché missing is the Glaswegian welder called Kilty McSporran.
In act two the comedians perform their material at a bingo club. Their jokes aren’t funny. That’s the joke. For the performers this represents a huge challenge. To make the weakness of poor comedy hilarious would test a world-class clown and the cast aren’t really up to it. So we’re left with a lot of tatty old racist jokes. Like this. Pakistani accused of rape. Victim arrives for ID parade. ‘Yes,’ says Pakistani, ‘dat’s definitely de vun.’ There are two targets here: the figure of fun in the gag and the teller of the joke itself whose debased sensibility is the butt of our mirthful condescension.
At the play’s climax, a talent scout arrives and passes judgment on the acts. Some get the handshake, others the elbow. And while these scenes eerily foreshadow The X-Factor they also expose the play’s indolent pace. Thanks to Cowell and Co. we expect a talent contest to have more intensity and variety and a much quicker turnover of triumph and disaster. The X-Factor can wreck a dozen lives, and exalt one, every 20 minutes between advert breaks. Only in the closing moments does Griffiths’s play come into its own. Eddie reveals the wartime trauma that destroyed his ambition. And the most talented of the rejects celebrates his failure and asserts his refusal to conform to comic orthodoxy.
These are moments of greatness but they arrive very late in the day and even the wonderful cast can’t lift the play above ‘interesting curio’ level. Matthew Kelly, as the broken star Eddie, has a marvellous air of twinkly dismay, like Supermac in a cloth cap. And Keith Allen is masterful as the cold smug talent scout. But the top honours go to Kulvinder Ghir, as Mr Patel, who gets just two minutes in the spotlight and electrifies the entire show. It helps that his gag is one of the better ones. India, famine. Village, starving. Farmer watches cow eating grass, sacrosanct. Night-time. Farmer gets knife, ambushes cow. ‘Wait,’ says cow, ‘it’s forbidden to kill me.’ ‘Aha!’ says farmer, wielding knife, ‘a talking horse.’
Over at the Leicester Square Theatre, Bobby Crush appears in a Liberace tribute show. The dramatic premise is as light and frothy as the snowy white costume enfolding the virtuoso as he arrives on stage. Liberace has died and at the gates of heaven he must convince St Peter he is worthy of being admitted to paradise. Crush runs through a medley of favourites and pauses occasionally for a burst of biographical detail.
Liberace (who first performed as ‘Walter Busterkeys’) was a Polish–Italian from Milwaukee who led a fascinating and troubled life. He was gay but had trouble keeping the closet door shut. In 1956 a Daily Mirror columnist, William Connor, concocted this lethally cunning description of him. ‘A deadly, winking, sniggering, snuggling, chromium-plated, scent-impregnated, luminous, quivering, giggling, fruit-flavoured, mincing, ice-covered heap of mother-love.’ It’s almost a rap. You could set it to music. During the libel action that followed Liberace denied being gay under oath and he won the case on the grounds that the word ‘fruit-flavoured’ implied homosexuality. He donated the £8,000 damages to charity. But in later life he was never free to admit his true orientation for fear of being charged with perjury.
In the early 1980s, an acrimonious split with his ‘bodyguard’ Scott Thorson brought more unwelcome attention. Liberace was that most commonplace of celebrity contradictions, an intensely private exhibitionist. In this show Crush is more concerned with the atmosphere of Liberace’s personality than with his tragicomic life and his priority is to fill the venue with his bonhomie and make us share his affection for his subject. Insubstantial aims and he succeeds effortlessly. There’s not much meat here but if you want a square meal don’t order candyfloss.
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