Update 10/7: An Audience with Jimmy Savile is to transfer to the Edinburgh Fringe. It will be at Assembly Studio 1 from Aug 11 - 22. Tickets here,
Too Soon? It’s the cry that usually goes up when a topical stand-up gag gets a gasp rather than a giggle. When it was announced that Alistair McGowan would be playing Jimmy Savile in a new play about the DJ's crimes the cry went up again. But to shy away from this subject matter would be foolish. It was shying away from what was going on that allowed the man who put the vile in Savile to get away with his abuse for so long.
This play, by Jonathan Maitland, is definitely not a comedy, but there is a dark humour running through it as McGowan captures Savile’s outward benevolence and inner malevolence. It is interesting casting because, of course, McGowan impersonated Savile when he was still viewed as a bit of an eccentric. This time we get accounts of rape and Savile threatening to break every bone in a business rival’s body. Not really eccentric at all.
The format of the play is Savile being gushingly interviewed on a This Is Your Life-style programme. We don’t learn much about his formative years but we do learn that he had a habit of doing things differently ever since he went down the mines in the war, turning up in his smart suit and mining naked before donning his clean clothes again. He clearly realised that odd behaviour could mask all sorts of dirt.
Between the sycophantic biography we see the other chilling side. Leah Whitaker plays a victim battling to be believed. The tabloids challenge Savile but are silenced by his legal threats and reminders that he has powerful friends in high places. Hospital bosses and others sing – in one case literally – Savile’s praises.
Along the way there are the hiding-in-plain-sight hints that he clearly knew he was doing wrong. When he gets a gong from the Palace he chuckles “off the hook”, thinking that makes him untouchable. Elsewhere he gestures towards his offstage bedroom in a mock lascivious manner, while other comical asides carry a double meaning given what we now know.
McGowan is very good in a role that is clearly more difficult than it might initially seem for someone so adept at voices. He keeps the jewellery-jangling and howzabout-that-thens to a minimum. In some ways just the sight of the straw-haired Yorkshireman in a purple tracksuit chomping on a cigar is enough, but McGowan goes much deeper. This is acting, not impression. He is too tall, but there is not a lot he can do about that.
The problem of course is that while this well-researched production tells what Savile did and also conveys how he got away with it, what we are left with, however, is why. That is never answered here, but posing the question is far better than brushing it under the carpet.
Until July 11. Tickets here.
