Who says comedy is a young person’s game? On Sunday night the Leicester Square Theatre is staging the first Old Comedian of the Year Final. Though ‘old’ there means over 35, which is nothing compared to two shows currently running almost next door to each other in the Strand in London.
Jackie Mason, at the Adelphi until tomorrow, is 83. Jim Dale, at the Vaudeville, is 79. For my Jackie Mason review go here. This is a review of Dale, and it’s a difficult one to write. I found the show both fascinating and hugely entertaining, but I kept thinking throughout it, who else would like this? I can’t see anyone under 40 being tempted into a buying a ticket – although if they were given a freebie I’m sure they would enjoy it.
Dale might not be a superstar these days, but, boy, has he had a colourful, varied career and onstage he rattles nimbly through the bullet points. The show is called Just Jim, but I wonder if he considered calling it Lucky Jim. He truly seems to have been in the right place at the right time. Apart, that is, from where he was born – Rothwell, or as he calls it, the “dead centre” of England, putting the emphasis firmly on “dead”.
The aspiring performer soon escaped though. After cutting his teeth during the dying days of music hall he found himself as the warm-up man on early TV pop show The Six-Five Special. The producer didn’t think much of his gags but said he could sing a song next week, which he did. Future Beatles producer George Martin liked what he heard and for a few years Dale was a hip-swivelling pop star. It was that easy.
He is best known in the UK, however, for his work in 11 Carry On films, so we get a selection of clips and some anecdotes about how testy Kenneth Williams could be. The stories are told with great affection as Dale moves on to talk about going straight at the Young Vic and then ending up on Broadway in Barnum before more recently providing all the voices for the American audio version of Harry Potter. You could say he was dogged by success. As a sideline he wrote massive hits for others, including Georgy Girl for the film of the same name.
As I said, it’s all absolutely fascinating for anyone with more than a passing interest in showbusiness history. Dale’s early act used jokes and songs that were already nearly a century old when he did them and he has no shame doing them again another 60 years on. There are no frills onstage. Just Dale, pianist Mark York and yarns, dances and tunes to keep you hooked.
As every review has probably mentioned, he is in remarkably good shape for his age, doing the kind of eccentric rubber-legged jigging that someone thirty years younger might struggle with. He is equally flexible when it comes to verbal dexterity, delivering a great riff packed with phrases from Shakespeare in ther first half and later doing a similar tongue twister from Barnum.
It’s an unashamed nostalgiafest that I’d thoroughly recommend, particularly if you can pick up a cheap ticket on a deal – tickets start at a tenner at the link below. I can’t see the kind of audience that might go the the Invisible Dot trotting along, but maybe they should. They don't make them like Dale any more. I wonder how many twentysomethings currently on the circuit will be able to do a two-hour West End show in fifty years time.
Until June 20. Tickets here.
