RSS

Contact us

Friday 9 January 2009

Pick of Edinburgh

Dybbuk
King’s Theatre

Britt on Britt
Assembly Rooms

Surviving Spike
Assembly Rooms

I prefer Britt Ekland. Yes, the bus-pass-bearing Swedish popsicle is still with us after 45 years of celebrity hobnobbing. Her solo performance reveals a few undiscovered wonders. She has a photo of herself at 13, a fat, ugly, sexless thing with a double chin and dark hair cut in a tomboyish bob. She used to write a diary in her own blood. With puberty came beauty and with beauty came everything else. She married Peter Sellers, aged 21, following a courtship that lasted ten days. After their divorce, she took up with Rod Stewart, who was obsessed with two things — football and food. He called Britt his ‘sex kitchen’. While she was absent filming, he wrote the lyrics ‘You’re in my heart, you’re in my soul’ and played her the the song when she returned. What enchantment! Next day she learned from George Hamilton that Rod had a new blonde on the conveyor belt. She revisits these joys and traumas with genuine emotion, and it’s a shame she has to pad out the show with sentimental chintz about her kids and her toy-dog. She’s known dozens of A-listers, from Frank Sinatra and Liz Taylor to Tony Curtis, Steve McQueen and Princess Margaret, and though she mentions them all she has no titbit to offer us. Come on, Britt. Make one up. The dead can’t sue. The living won’t. Polished and tightened this show could be her pension. Untouched it will sentence the Sex Kitchen to another decade of waving her fake wand in the Watford panto.

Surviving Spike is a far richer feast. Adapted from the memoirs of Spike’s manager, Norma Farnes, this superb play examines the troubled relationship between secretary and screwball. Spike was bad-tempered, foul-mouthed, manipulative, selfish and emotionally infantile, but his torrential rages were counterbalanced by extraordinary acts of charity. This is the angriest, nastiest and yet most generous, most entertaining, most loving saint you ever saw. And he is a saint, without question. His life was a nightmare. Swept along by furious surges of creativity, he would crash and burn in the hellfire of depression. Solitude and darkness healed his mental torments. As did commercial success. In fact a hearty dose of public acclaim was much more effective at soothing his despair than any doctor’s prescription or psychiatrist’s ray-gun. The ECT failed. The KBE worked. Michael Barrymore impersonates Spike rather loosely but with perfect conviction, and gives us a nervy, lanky, loveable madman. I admit I’ve never warmed to Barrymore (and I liked him far less after witnessing his hopeless West End comeback a few years ago) but this is better. This is the money. The road home awaits him.

More articles from: Lloyd Evans | this section

Print this article  |  Email to a friend  |  Permalink  |   Comment

Post this entry to:   del.icio.us | Digg | Newsvine | NowPublic | Reddit

Advertisement

Spectator Business | Apollo Magazine

Corporate | Advertising | Privacy | Terms

Spectator, 22 Old Queen Street, London, SW1H 9HP

All Articles and Content Copyright ©2008 by The Spectator | All Rights Reserved