Battersea Bardot continues at the New Wimbledon Theatre Studio, London until 23 September 2023.Star rating: three stars ★ ★ ★ ✩ ✩Battersea Bardot was the alliterative name invented by the media for actress Carol White when she hit the jackpot as the star of those working-class dramas about homelessness Cathy Come Home and Poor Cow in the 1960s.
The daughter of a Hammersmith scrap metal dealer was suddenly famous and being compared to Julie Christie and French bombshell Brigitte Bardot. She loved the nickname even though it was factually inaccurate because it signified that she had arrived. And fame was what she craved.
As a teenager she’d had a part in Up the Junction and was Peter Sellers’ girlfriend in Never Let Go, but when Ken Loach cast her in the controversial no-holds-barred TV drama Cathy Come Home and later gave her the lead in the gritty movie Poor Cow she moved into the big-time.
Michael Winner cast her opposite Oliver Reed in I’ll Never Forget What’s ‘isname and co-starred with Dirk Bogarde and Alan Bates in The Fixer but when she went to the States in search of worldwide fame, Hollywood spat her out. Her films there, one with Dean Martin, were all flops. She became “just another blonde” and her three-movie contract was torn up.
Abused as a child by an uncle who came to stay, sex meant nothing to her except as a tool to further her career. The notches on her bedpost included Sellers, Reed, Adam Faith and Richard Burton. There was even a dalliance with Frank Sinatra – “he sent a car round to collect me” – but he wanted exclusive rights and she chose to stay with her American producer boyfriend Paul.
It was the wrong call as it turned out because, drinking alone on New Year’s Eve, 1969, in her posh London home, she rang Paul to find out when he’d be arriving, only to be told he was partying with four ladies of doubtful virtue and was staying where he was.
This is the point where the new one-woman musical – book, music and lyrics by Ewen Moore – starts and what a tragic story he has to tell. It was all downhill from there and the last time I saw her was in 1981 on the West End stage in Nell Dunn’s play Steaming. She got good notices too but kept turning up late and got the sack.
Drug abuse and alcohol were never far away. White returned to Florida and more or less drank herself to an early death, aged 48. There was no money for a proper funeral and her ashes were parcelled up and posted back to England, a sorry end to a wasted life.
I was a genuine fan and thought she had something special about her so I was looking forward to seeing what Battersea Bardot – a 1994 TV documentary had a similar name – had to say.
Directed by Elizabeth Huskisson and split into two 40-minute segments to give actress Anne Rabbitt’s voice a half-time break, much as I want to encourage new writing it didn’t quite work for me. Not looking anything like White leaves Rabbitt with an uphill task and when you’re the only person on stage there’s nowhere to hide. She has great diction and a pleasing mezzo but I never felt she got to the heart of this almost-forgotten star. Maybe the words aren’t good enough.
Moore’s music is elegantly played by MD Gabrielle Ball on piano and Annie Hodgson on cello with musical arrangements by Annabelle Lee Revak. There must have been a problem with the back projection. It was showing, I think, a clip from Never Let Go but the picture was barely visible behind a curtain.
The flyer for the show calls Battersea Bardot “an enchanting new musical”, a strange use of the word “enchanting” for a story about a real-life tragedy.
The lack of air conditioning in an airless, windowless room on a sticky night didn’t help. The Studio needs to do more to make an evening out an event. The second new musical in their current festival, Seize The Cheese! will be a bit cheesier – it’s about a cheese-rolling contest in Gloucestershire. “The English Book Of Mormon” said one critic. It starts on 2 November.
Jeremy Chapman
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