Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Masochists and miserablists

Joan Rivers: A Work in Progress by a Life in Progress <br /> Leicester Square Theatre Liberty<br /> Globe Sons of York<br /> <em>Finborough</em>

issue 13 September 2008

Joan Rivers: A Work in Progress by a Life in Progress
Leicester Square Theatre

Liberty
Globe

Sons of York
Finborough

Let’s hear it for those ageing babes and their one-gran shows. Hip, hip, hip-replacement. Britt Ekland and Elaine Stritch are already at it, and here comes Joan Rivers who wastes no time wasting the opposition. ‘Anyone see Elaine Stritch? Wonderful show wasn’t it? Mind you, it was all me, me, me, me, me, me. “I understudied Ethel Merman. And I drank. I worked with Noel Coward. And I drank. I tried to seduce Rock Hudson. And he drank.”’

At 75, Rivers is easy on the eye, like a well-set egg custard in a wig.

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