ajhlovestheatre

JEFFREY BERNARD IS UNWELL

by Keith Waterhouse

Adapted and directed by James Hillier

The Coach And Horses, London – until 21 November 2023

https://jeffreyplay.com/ticket-booking

Immersive theatre gets a boozy kick in this adaptation of the 1989 Keith Waterhouse smash hit, celebrating Soho’s favourite dissolute son Jeffrey Bernard, based on his weekly columns chronicling the drinking, gambling, and other nefarious activities of central London’s most notorious quarter. First seen in 2019, James Hillier’s version shaves the original play down to a one hour monologue with bits of audience participation and, in a stroke of genius, is performed in the very pub, the Coach and Horses in Greek Street, where the real Bernard (1932-1997) hung out. That authenticity is key to its success, with the audience standing or sitting all around the unflatteringly lit, slightly rundown saloon bar as Robert Bathurst’s Jeffrey regales us with alcohol-infused philosophies and tales of his sundry misdemeanours.

Even more than Peter O’Toole who famously originated the stage role, Bathurst genuinely resembles Bernard, with his craggy, handsome face, floppy blonde-grey halr and lumbering but never graceless gait. He has perfected the slightly dead-eyed stare of the perennially drunk, and the rapid energy changes from languid to almost manic that can occur in the blink of a bloodshot eye. This Jeffrey Bernard seems to be at the point where joie de vivre has curdled into hopelessness, and, while he’s exasperating, he is, crucially, never malicious. If there are times when his speaking of the lines sounds a little like somebody rattling off a list, a quick Google search will reveal that this is pretty much how the real Jeffrey spoke, as though words are something to get through before the next slug of vodka.

Bathurst superbly captures the (often self-deprecating) wit, although the foggy, imprecise delivery sometimes obscures some of the laughs. Either that, or the concept of somebody drinking themselves to death (John Osborne famously referred to Bernard’s Spectator column as “a suicide note in weekly instalments”) just isn’t that amusing in 2023.

Just as the Coach And Horses pub itself seems stuck in the past, so the play feels like a throwback to a different era. The women in Bernard’s life are reduced here to a series of increasingly infuriated answerphone messages, and his casual indifference to them seems cruel until you realise that he’s indifferent about, well, almost everything. Removing all the other live actors and turning the play into what is essentially now a monologue makes it feel more than ever like a study in loneliness, however un-self pitying the central character. Still, this is a soured, ash-stained love letter to a Soho that’s now mostly lost to coffee shop chains, unaffordable apartments and other signs of urban gentrification.

Hillier’s staging consists mainly of having Bathurst circling the bar so that everybody can see him, and might benefit from more periods of stillness, although that could be difficult in such an idiosyncratic space. It undoubtedly nails the sense of seedy grandeur that attended Bernard and his ilk however, and has the unmistakable feeling of being a unique event. I saw the original production and, despite the magnificence of O’Toole, found it a bit overlong and self-indulgent; I actually preferred this one. It’s a celebration of, and lament for, a Soho that will never return, and one of its most unashamedly notorious denizens.