JEFFREY BERNARD IS UNWELL at The Coach and Horses, Soho

★★★★★

“Bathurst’s performance is a tour de force, capturing the pure essence of the wayward, accidental hero”

Jeffrey Bernard was a prolific writer. He was a prolific talker, drinker, gambler and womaniser too. But despite arriving each morning at the Coach and Horses pub in Soho, grey-faced and trembling, waiting for the doors to open, he managed to keep up (mostly) his contributions to the Spectator; his weekly “Low Life” columns eventually reaching four figures. Publishers naturally hovered with lucrative offers for his autobiography. When Faber dangled the juiciest carrot, Bernard placed an advert in The Spectator asking if any of its readers ‘could tell me what I was doing between 1960 to 1974?’. He never took the plunge, however, although he did write a spoof obituary of himself which epitomised the acute, self-deprecatory wit found in his columns.

Using the text from the Spectator “Low Life” columns, Keith Waterhouse’s play “Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell” opened in 1989 triumphantly starring Bernard’s friend and drinking companion Peter O’Toole. The Coach and Horses could well have been the rehearsal room. It is fitting, and also a masterstroke of theatricality, to stage a revival in the very pub where Bernard would prop up the bar by day, and by night.

Like the writing, the Coach and Horses on Greek Street conveys a bygone era. Photos on the walls commemorate the late and the great Bernard, cigarettes pile up in ashtrays and Double Diamond is advertised above the bar. Into the crowded room, Robert Bathurst’s Jeffrey Bernard comes crashing through the bar at five in the morning, having fallen asleep in the gents at closing time the previous night. Half-heartedly trying to get hold of the landlord to come and unlock the doors for him, he spends the next hour alternating between the vodka optic and regaling us with hilarious anecdotes. As he paces the bar, the prose trips off his tongue in flourishes of searing wit. Bathurst’s performance is a tour de force, capturing the pure essence of the wayward, accidental hero.

“Bathurst delivers the stories with brilliant insight”

The play’s title is lifted from the heading frequently used by the Spectator magazine to explain the absence of any writing; a euphemism of course. The context is rigidly set in a Soho that no longer exists and may lay itself open to accusations of being dated or insensitive to modern morals. We know what our protagonist would make of that and thankfully we would all still salute him. Even stand him a drink – if he wasn’t continually helping himself already.

James Hillier’s staging significantly cuts back the original text, but seemingly doesn’t cheat on the sharp-witted punchlines that accentuate each anecdote. Bernard had no qualms about making himself the target of his verbal attacks. He knew what he was, so there is no room for judgement nor shame, and absolutely no space for self-pity. Bathurst is well aware of the setting, and this honesty comes through unfiltered – the master raconteur that he is. He easily draws us into the world peopled by drunks, layabouts, criminals but also the likes of Dylan Thomas, Francis Bacon, Lucien Freud. Never sentimental, it is a love-letter – even a eulogy – to a bohemian Soho. A Soho that was dying at the same rate as Bernard himself in the closing decades of the twentieth century.

Aged fourteen, he made his first visit to Soho in 1946, and from that point he “never looked forward”. The life he led had perhaps fewer highs than lows, but it was, in his own words, “full of adventure and excess, and I wouldn’t change a single thing.” Bathurst delivers the stories with brilliant insight. We see the cragginess of a loveable rogue and laugh out loud. But we also glimpse the fallout. A short scene in Bernard’s hospital bed is surreally moving, as it resounds with metaphors, as though we are at the “bedside of a dying Soho, holding its hand wondering whether it is kinder to switch off the life support”.

The Coach and Horses has survived a corporate takeover in recent years and still retains its character. It is the perfect setting for this revival of the play, and with Bathurst as the host everyone is going to want to be a regular at the bar. So, get your round in quick.

JEFFREY BERNARD IS UNWELL at the Coach and Horses, Soho

Reviewed on 5th February 2024

by Jonathan Evans

Photography by Tom Howard

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JEFFREY BERNARD IS UNWELL

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★★

“For the most part, the play paddles in the shallow waters of caricature and stereotype”

The King’s Head was the UK’s oldest pub theatre when it closed its doors last August. Less than six months later – though years in the planning – the doors reopen to the new purpose-built space. The site is steeped in theatrical history, and many of us stepping through the doors on opening night for the inaugural production carry fond memories or have personal connections with the old space. The spirit of many great names in British theatre still lingers, some of them now ghosts. Watching perhaps. We can only speculate as the evidence is whitewashed over, and little remains, despite directly connecting to the old dressing room. None of the atmosphere has crossed the threshold. No memorabilia. No link to its colourful history. No echoes from the past. Nevertheless, as we descend the stairwells down to the subterranean black box, the anticipation is palpable.

“Exhibitionists” is an apt play to open the first season. In line with the LGBTQ+ leanings the venue has adopted over the years, it also harks back to a romantic golden age of twentieth century theatre. In their programme notes, writers Shaun McKenna and Andrew Van Sickle, reference Terence Rattigan and Alan Ayckbourn, while also drawing parallels with the screwball wit of Hollywood’s Charles Lederer. Bizarrely no mention is made of Noël Coward, even though the plot of “Exhibitionists” is lifted, lock, stock, and barrel from Coward’s thirties comedy of manners, ‘Private Lives’. Almost. Except it lacks the manners, or Coward’s mastery of the language. The subversiveness of Coward’s sexual identity was reflected in his plays – particularly ‘Private Lives’ – but as well as being a closet gay play, it is a classic that maintains universal appeal. “Exhibitionists” is overt, brash and blatant, but its focus is much too narrow.

Set in the San Francisco art world, Conor (Ashley D Gayle) and Robbie (Robert Rees) are living separate lives having split from their volatile, open relationship years previously. They both now have new, younger partners. Conor is with upcoming film-maker Mal (Jake Mitchell-Jones) while Robbie has hooked up with the heteroflexible Rayyan (Rolando Montecalvo). The two couples stumble upon one another at an art exhibition. The exes reunite, reignite and relocate swiftly to a nearby motel run by the implausibly eager Sebastian (Øystein Lode) with the new partners in hot pursuit. Squabbles and sex alternate as the farce unravels.

“The performers do well to counteract the faithless writing but cannot escape the cartoon landscape in which they are trapped”

The premise is predictable and, for all its profanity, not at all subversive. For the most part, the play paddles in the shallow waters of caricature and stereotype. Which is surprising, but also unsettling in that it seems to be unwittingly marginalising the culture it represents. There is little sense of celebration. The in-jokes jar, as though written by an outsider looking in, which renders the piece exclusive, eradicating its wider appeal in one foul swoop. Meanwhile, promiscuity and predatory behaviour are promoted in a way that, if presented in any other environment, would be condemned.

The performers do well to counteract the faithless writing but cannot escape the cartoon landscape in which they are trapped. Bronagh Lagan’s direction moves the action snappily, encumbered however by superfluous entrances and exits (which become as repetitive as the dialogue); and more so by the poor sightlines created by the venue’s raked seating.

“Exhibitionists” is a rather unsubtle revival of a delicately intelligent original. A poor man’s Coward. For half a century the King’s Head has paved the way for pub theatre. The previously shabby auditorium has attracted top writers, directors and actors throughout its eclectic and eccentric history. The atmosphere hasn’t crossed over to the new venue, and the opening show is not one to draw it in. The ghosts will want a new space to haunt. Let us hope the audiences don’t follow them because, with time on its side, the King’s Head will recapture its soul, and our hearts.

JEFFREY BERNARD IS UNWELL at The Coach and Horses, Soho

★★★★★

“Bathurst’s performance is a tour de force, capturing the pure essence of the wayward, accidental hero”

“Bathurst delivers the stories with brilliant insight”

JEFFREY BERNARD IS UNWELL at the Coach and Horses, Soho

Reviewed on 5th February 2024

by Jonathan Evans

Photography by Tom Howard

Top rated shows in January 2024:

JEFFREY BERNARD IS UNWELL

JEFFREY BERNARD IS UNWELL

EXHIBITIONISTS at the King’s Head Theatre

★★

“For the most part, the play paddles in the shallow waters of caricature and stereotype”

“The performers do well to counteract the faithless writing but cannot escape the cartoon landscape in which they are trapped”

EXHIBITIONISTS at the King’s Head Theatre

Reviewed on 8th January 2024

by Jonathan Evans

Photography by Geraint Lewis

Previously reviewed at this venue:

EXHIBITIONISTS

EXHIBITIONISTS