Jim Dale in Just Jim Dale – Still Carrying On at the Vaudeville Theatre, London. Picture: Joan Marcus
Just Jim Dale – Still Carrying On continues at the Vaudeville Theatre, London until 20 June.
Star rating: 4 stars ★ ★ ★ ★
“What are you off to see at the theatre?” asks my 18-year-old babysitter. “It’s a one-man show,” I reply, “performed by Jim Dale. He’s best known in this country for appearing in 11 Carry On movies. In the US, where he has lived for many years, Dale has found fame through narrating all the Harry Potter books. And on top of that, he’s been a stand-up comic, a pop star and a Shakespearean actor.”
Quite a detailed response, I thought, and yet it was clear said teenager had no idea who I was talking about. Well, young people out there, please don’t be put off – an evening with Dale is a couple of hours well spent.
What makes Dale’s neatly written dose of nostalgia worth seeing is not the name checks for those artists the actor has worked with down the years, but his observations on performing and the huge role laughter has played in his career – from the days of music hall to this very show he now presents to his home crowd. The production, originally without the ‘Still Carrying On’ tag line (the Carry On movies don’t really have much of a following across the pond at all), played at Broadway’s Roundabout Theatre Company this time last year.
It’s true that, apart from playing the role of Fagin in Oliver! at the London Palladium in 1996, Dale’s life and career has been mainly based in the US since the 1980s, but it appears there is still plenty of love for this comic, actor, singer, mimic and songwriter (he wrote lyrics for the title song of the 1988 movie ‘Georgy Girl’, for which he received an Oscar nomination). Not only that, but the incredibly lean and sprightly nearly 80-year-old seems to love building a rapport with an audience as much as he did 50 years ago when he first appeared at the Vaudeville, in the musical The Wayward Way.
Stories and songs, and of course a few gags, are cleverly interwoven by Dale and director Richard Maltby Jr, as the former recalls: seeing the original London production of Me and My Girl starring Lupino Lane (a show which he was later to star in on Broadway), how he landed – literally – on the music hall stage for the first time as a green 17-year-old, and what it was like to swap a successful career as a pop star to play an array of Shakespeare’s clowns, prompting an invitation from Olivier to join the National Theatre when it was based at the Old Vic. Dale’s monologue from Noel Coward’s one-act Fumed Oak, the first play he saw, is a small indication of how great those performances must have been.
Dale also impresses through musical wordplay, not least in speedily listing all those Shakespeare quotes we use on a every day basis, as well as the tongue-twisting ‘Museum Song’ from Barnum, the Broadway show which won him a Tony Award in 1980.
The same show also provides a moving and tender moment, through the different reprises of ‘The Colors of My Life’, as Dale explains that while he and his wife are like chalk and cheese when it comes to the showbiz spotlight, their love has remained constant for 35 years.
All of this, and there is still time for physical humour, whether it be the image of a boy ballet dancer determined to perform a pas de deux for a competition, despite his partner having missed her bus (!), or the more recent memory of he first nervewracking Harry Potter recording session (the audio books have since won Dale oodles of awards and three Guinness World Records).
There are a few hitches along the way, but trusted and likeable accompanist Mark York is on hand to occasionally steer Dale back to the script. Neither gentleman could have known that the biggest hiccup on opening night would be a technical glitch during the Carry On section, but they refused to be disconcerted and handled the incident with aplomb.
There is no doubt this is a gentle, old-fashioned affair – Dale hints that most of the jokes have received a telegram from the Queen – but it shouldn’t be a crime to celebrate a charming story in which this little boy from the market town of Rothwell, Northamptonshire really did get to live his dream.
With just a piano and MD for company (musical arrangements are by York and associate director Aaron Gandy), not many entertainers can hold an audience in the palm of their hands for 100 minutes and make them laugh and cry in the process. It’s a privilege to have an opportunity to be part of Dale doing just that.
Lisa Martland
SHARE THIS POST:
Comments are closed.