Tom Conti in
Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell
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Just as Jacques Brel is no longer alive and well and living in Paris (but continues to live on in the musical revue of that name, currently being revived off-Broadway), so Jeffrey Bernard—the longtime Soho resident, journalist and legendary drunk—is not merely unwell but is actually now deceased. And though it may seem slightly morbid to watch him come back to life in Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell, the stage reincarnation of the kind of excesses that actually led to his death, there has also always been something a bit weird about not merely indulging but celebrating this tale of woeful self-destruction that was first brought to the stage in 1989, long before the character met the inevitable result of his lifestyle choices. Originally seen at the Apollo Theatre on Shaftesbury Avenue with Peter O’Toole in the title role, one legendary hellraiser was playing another in what could have been an autobiographical note. O’Toole inhabited the role with lived experience, but I was nevertheless wary then, and again when he returned to the role at the Old Vic in 1999, that it felt a bit like being stuck in a pub with a drunk who is intent on telling you his entire life story, but from which there is no means of escape.
Just as the character is clearly a prisoner of himself, Keith Waterhouse’s play finds him waking up to find himself unwittingly locked inside Soho’s Coach and Horses pub at five in the morning. For the next two hours, as he tries unsuccessfully to rouse the pub landlord Norman on the phone—unseen in the show, but credited in the programme as “a true friend to Jeffrey” and thanked in the production acknowledgements “for his forbearance and good humour”—we, too, are held captive by his tales of remembrance, woe and wit. All the while, he relentlessly attacks the vodka—neat first, then with splashes of tomato juice. “You can convince yourself you’re having breakfast—and a healthy one at that”.
But though I resisted it before, I surrendered more to the new revival that has just opened at the Garrick, thanks to a captivating performance by the genially crumpled Tom Conti, who brings a surprising gentleness, warmth and affection to the role that, with a knowing wink, an arched eyebrow and a shrug of the shoulders, seems to be at once inside the man but outside him, too. Director Ned Sherrin tells us in a programme note, extracted from Sherrin’s recently published biography, that Conti “rarely touches alcohol,” so when he first did the play as O’Toole’s first replacement, it amounted to “a bravura piece of character acting.”
Conti, best known for his Oscar-nominated turn in Reuben Reuben and as Pauline Collins’ love interest in the film version of Shirley Valentine, is an inherently lovable actor, and with his disheveled shock of graying hair and crumpled white shirt, is a genial guide around the contours of this damaged life that has an even greater poignancy now for the fact that he may have failed at many things, but succeeded in destroying himself.
Sherrin’s production and Waterhouse’s play keeps the stream-of-consciousness monologue at its centre lively and on the move by acted-out interruptions from assorted poets, hacks, wives, girlfriends, magistrates and hookers that pass by to illuminate certain anecdotes. These rather thankless character roles are taken by a spirited and versatile troupe of four actors, including Royce Mills who did the same service in the original production.
Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell
By Keith Waterhouse, based on the life and writings of Jeffrey Bernard
Directed by Ned Sherrin
Garrick Theatre