Just Jim Dale – Roundabout Theatre Company

Jim Dale in Just Jim Dale at Roundabout Theatre Company’s Laura Pels Theatre, New York. Picture: Joan Marcus

Just Jim Dale continues at Roundabout Theatre Company’s Laura Pels Theatre, New York, until 10 August.

The spirit of English music hall informs almost every moment of the new Off-Broadway solo offering simply but aptly entitled, Just Jim Dale. And together with Dale’s more-than-triple threat talents as singer, dancer, physical comic, actor and raconteur, it makes for a jolly good 100 minutes.

In his self-written scenario, smartly directed by Richard Maltby Jr., Dale recounts in affable light-hearted fashion his life and career, from his birth and early years in the English market town of Rothwell, to his successes on the Broadway stage, and the notoriety he has most recently attained as the reader for the audio versions of all seven of the Harry Potter books, portraying more than 200 characters.

Among the stories, we hear how his family held music hall family sing-along Saturday nights when he was a tot, and how his dad took him to London to see “the real thing”, Lupino Lane in Me and My Girl, inspiring Dale’s desire to become a performer who could make people laugh. Almost 40 years later, Dale found himself on Broadway, playing in that same musical, as a replacement for the lead Robert Lindsay. By that time, Dale was an established star of the New York theatre, having won a Tony for his performance in the title role in the musical Barnum, and before that, acclaim for his work in an adaptation of Moliere’s Scapino.

Dale’s narrative is enlivened with reenactments of various key incidents, such as his traumatic audition for the Carroll Levis musical hall troupe, with which he toured England as a teenage comedian for some two years. In one great physical bit, Dale demonstrates how as a young dance student he performed a pas de deux all by himself, when his partner failed to show for a recital. There are also plenty of vintage jokes, culled from the annals of old-time music hall.

While the poster for the show describes it as ‘a one-man musical comedy’, there is probably more comedy than music. And to demonstrate, his serious acting chops, Dale, who worked with the Royal National Theatre, does a long monologue from Noel Coward’s one-act Fumed Oak. He also celebrates Shakespeare by tongue-tripping nimbly through an array of words and phrases said to have been invented by the Bard.

But, with the unobtrusive piano accompaniment of Mark York, Dale delivers ingratiating renditions of a host of songs, including such pleasures as the title song and ‘The Lambeth Walk’ from Me and My Girl and a trio of melodies from Barnum, including a most moving ‘The Colours of My Life’. He also pays due respect to ‘Georgy Girl’, the title song for the 1966 movie that made Lynn Redgrave a star and for which he wrote the lyrics. The song also garnered an Oscar nomination. Another standout is a full-out version of ‘Dick-A-Dum-Dum’, a tune Dale wrote during his time as a pop singer in Britain in the early days of rock‘n’roll.

As his closer, Dale chooses Irving Berlin’s ‘Let Me Sing and I’m Happy’, using his own lyrics to express his credo, that if his jokes can “milk a laugh or two, then I’m hap, hap, hap, happy”.

Just Jim Dale may be a one-man show, but there are multitudes of talents on stage.

Ron Cohen

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