Later on yesterday I was over at the New Diorama Theatre to see David Benson’s solo performance of ‘Think No Evil Of Us – My Life With Kenneth Williams’, the award-winning show he originally premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe in 1996.
David’s performance is studied to the point that when he puts on the fitted jacket used as a prop to indicate Williams’ presence on the stage, you could be forgiven for thinking that he is actually right there in the room – the physical mannerisms and the voice are absolutely perfect. In fact, a few minutes in its as if David actually disappears from view, almost like some strange case of possession. In contrast, when he takes the jacket off that’s a cue to the audience that Kenneth is now lurking somewhere behind the curtain and that we’re having a conversation with someone else – it’s a very neat device.
In terms of the flow of the piece, Benson recreates Williams’ life at several key points – there’s a pathetically bungled attempt at a romantic assignation with one of his sister’s boyfriends, an ongoing argument with a producer during a production where Kenneth is actually off-stage, an acerbic dinner with friends in an Italian restaurant in William’s later years where he is at his most cruel and vindictive (and which is recreated so vividly you can almost see the checkered table cloth and the harassed waiters), and finally a moving scene depicting his apparent suicide, where Williams is portrayed at his most vulnerable – the witty, confident showman completely stripped away. Mixed in with all of this is a recollection by Benson of his own childhood experiences of growing up in Birmingham, which he uses to draw painful parallels with Williams own life. This part of the performance had me squirming uncomfortably in my seat as it so closely echoes my own experiences of the time, including the accents!
There will be a reprise of the performance on Sunday September 19 if this sounds like something you’d like to see, and I will just close with a few words on the theatre itself. The New Diorama is a small, intimate space that accommodates only 80 audience members, and is located in the controversial new Regents Place development – controversial because to build it they had to knock down several streets of apartment blocks including Osnaburgh St, where Williams had a flat in Marlborough House until his death in 1988. In my view the development is rather corporate and cold, and quite frankly given the character of the streets around it I think I’d have preferred the area before British Land ‘modernised’ it. On a more cheerful note, I should also mention that since Sunday the theatre has a new notable feature – after the performance yesterday a plaque to Kenneth was unveiled by the Mayor and David Benson, which has been generously donated by the British Comedy Society and which you can see depicted here: