Perhaps, after yet more rumination, I may be being too unjust about Walthamstow. I even went out for a night's theatre, of a sort, in the borough this month. The playhouse in question is in fact the rear bar of the Plough Inn on Wood Street, its uncurtained corner stage no more than two metres square, raised only three inches off the floor, but there's an ambience in the room that seems timeless. The show was "To be Frank", a one-man piece written and performed by David Benson, who had found criticial acclaim a few Edinburgh Festivals ago with"Think no evil of us- my life with Kenneth Williams". To be fair, most of the audience were there because we couldn't get tickets for the Williams homage, and this second prize, an exploration of the life and mindset of Frankie Howerd did feel at times like an unwanted consolation.
That's not to say that Benson wasn't funny- indeed in parts he was hilarious, and his impersonation was a couple of notches above adequate. To me however, Benson's attempts to find some connection between his own life and that of Howerd were tenuous at best: Howerd's dips in his popularity were compared to Benson being eclipsed by Graham Norton; Benson not appearing on television since portraying Noel Cowerd in an episode of "Goodnight Sweetheart" was linked in some way to Howerd's fall from the primetime of "Up Pompeii". In truth, Benson acknowledged some of the faults of his own analysis in the more discursive elements of the show, and the final sketch was reasonably mirthful. I haven't actually seen Benson's performance as Kenneth Williams, but look forward to doing so at some point: he seems much the more tragic, and interesting, of his subjects.
My brows were aimed slightly higher for a trip to the Little Angel (Puppetry) Theatre earlier this month, for a production of Shakespeare's poem, "Venus & Adonis". Not counting "Spitting Image" and the last few Labour Party Conferences, I haven't seen a puppetry performance for more than than a quarter of a century, but this really was quite delightful. The poem itself was brilliantly declaimed by Michael Pennington, and the puppets, mostly operated in semi-occlusion, soon became anthropomorphically transformed in the mind's eye. Never did the phrase "a wooden performance" seem
less apt.The plot of the poem was skillfully revealed, but
the crux of it appeared to be that Venus spent most of the
time trying to seduce Adonis, who seemed to be more
interested in boar hunting, and there was a definite
question mark over his sexuality: at times it looked as
though poor Adonis was resisting Venus's entreaties with
all the ardour of Kenneth Williams fending off Matron's
professions of love. Carry on, Shakespeare.
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