Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell by Keith Waterhouse. The Coach and Horses, 26 Greek Street, London selected dates from 30th October. 3***: William Russell.

Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell by Keith Waterhouse. The Coach and Horses, 26 Greek Street, London selected dates from 30th October.

3***: William Russell.

Robert Bathhurst is back at the Soho pub where the journalist and drunkard Jeffrey Bernard used to hang out under the eye of the tyrannical landlord Norman Balon. It is a slightly edited version of the one man play which won the Evening Standard award for best comedy in 1990 when the role was performed by Peter O’Toole. Now it is a rather questionable celebration of a man who was a shining light of that vanished sleazy Soho world of the after hours drinking clubs like the Colony Room where writers, actors, painters, drunks and criminals used to hand out. In 1990 Bernard was still alive – he died in 1997 - but in 2023 who remembers him? Bathhurst, however, does a terrific job conjuring up the man while making him arguably more attractive than he was. We find Bernard locked in overnight in the pub – he has fallen asleep in the gents – prowling round the bar, helping himself to vodka, doing his celebrated party trick with a glass of water, the lid of a biscuit box and an egg, and recalling his past sins of omission and commission while trying to get Balon to answer the phone. His most celebrated work was his Low Life column in the Spectator, a counter to the magazine’s High Life one written by the socialite Taki. The play’s title is what the magazine said when for the usual reason the column did not appear – Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell. His Soho is long gone – I never got to the Colony Room but I did, like pretty well everyone then, go to the after hours drinking clubs that flourished in Soho because the pubs were shut. They were home to disreputable people – things that had fallen off the back of a lorry could be acquired – and somewhere to go after a show for a late drink or two before the night bus home. Waterhouse has compiled the best of Bernard, and his play, in spite of being very out of touch with the times today, still works – it was and is a fine monologue to which a dishevelled Bathurst does justice. The attraction, of course, is that he is performing in the real pub where it is possible the ghost of Bernard still lurks. The Coach and Horses never was particularly glamorous – Soho has fancier pubs – and the tacky setting adds to the feeling that one is watching the real man, slightly cleaned up perhaps, looking back on his undeniably amazing life of debauchery, four wives, gambling – he was Private Eye’s racing correspondent – working as a stage hand, as a labourer, entertaining older rich women, and once at the races vomiting over the Queen Mother’s shoes, although that story isn’t in the play. It does include some his more celebrated bon mots as well as a terrific race for cats which he apparently once set up. Four stars for Bathurst then but only three for the play which, while skilfully put together – Waterhouse was a marvellous writer – has, like its subject, not worn well. Interestingly the programme, while it tells us about Bathurst and Waterhouse tells us nothing about Bernard – elderly regulars at the pub may well know all about him but whether anyone else does is another matter. Bernard has been resuscitated but one does wonder why.

Cast

Robert Bathurst -Jeffrey Bernard.

Creatives

Director – James Hillier.

Sound Designer – Max Pappenheim.