Reviews

 

Barry Kirk
Barking and Dagenham Post, February 2007

AFTER interviewing David Benson before his visit to Westcliff, I asked what it was like to emulate a theatrical icon he had never met. The answer was empathy. 'Think no evil of us - my life with Kenneth Williams' played at the Palace Theatre, Westcliff, on Sunday night, and suggested some answers why the comedian committed suicide.

David's portrayal of the Carry On star was what the packed audience wanted to hear. His finishing remarks summed up the performance when he said: "I never met him, but I wished I could have told him how much I loved him. "He did not love himself, so he could not accept the affec­ tion of his fans, and that was very sad."

You would be right in thinking the subject of Kenneth Williams was a winner - the man who out-camped Butlins was almost a national treasure - the sad thing is he did not appreciate it himself, said David. And here lay the background to one of the most riveting one-man shows I have seen for a long long time.

We were treated to the television face of the comedian, along with the most perfect impression of the man. All you had to do was shut your eyes, and the ears told you it was Williams on stage. The voice, the nuances, the outrageous tempo and pitch, it was pure Kenneth Williams. But this was not a tribute to a legend; it was one very talented actor's impression of another. Personal knowledge was not needed, as David said after the show. "It's perhaps a good thing I never met him, as it would have made my impression of him more difficult."

But this was how we all saw Williams. The outrageous camp actor, Inwardly gay at a time when there were few cupboards to come out of, but it did not matter. I seem to remem­ber thinking at the time, no one can talk and act like that and not be gay, but what the hell. Kenneth Williams was above all that. Even if you could not think it out loud in public, it cer tainly did not matter, and David Benson captured it to a tee.

Sadly, the man could not accept his sexuality and literally hated himself, and in a superb piece of acting, David took us down that dark path to Williams taking an overdose, tragical ly ending his glittering career. At the time, no one could understand it. The adoring public were not privy to the inner torment that made him take his own life. The tragedy was it was so totally unnecessary.

David Benson has been taking this show round for the past decade, and he told me that he would continue as it never failed pull in the audiences, and on Sunday I could see why. He conceived the idea of a one-man show about Williams after watching a television programme on the comedian's published diaries following his death.

"It was fascinating. The public perception of Kenneth was one thing, but the diaries and letters showed a different man. Brilliantly funny on the outside, but bearing a burden of guilt inside" he said. However, this was not going to be a solid tribute, it includ­ed David's own life experiences, and this is where the empa thy came that was so essential to this outstanding piece of theatre.

Williams' mother was a huge influence on him, and into the impression of him, David suddenly stopped and started to draw parallels with his own mother. It was attention grabbing stuff as two lives seemed entwined. Suffering life's lows then experiencing highs, David showed what could have influ enced Williams by using examples of his life with brutal hon esty, and how he coped with it; from schooldays, through puberty and discovering himself, then elegantly presenting how he had come to terms with his inner well balanced man. At the same time he graphically allowed us a peep into the troubled world of Kenneth Williams who could not accept what he was, and the blocks of self doubt and hate that led to the final chapter in his life.

It was cemented by a second half monologue of Williams supposedly at a restaurant with three friends. It was the other side of the man we all loved, but never knew or even thought capable of. He was unbearable, arrogant, rude and his own centre of attention who never stopping talking and publicly humiliating his friends who tried to join the one-sided tirade.

Williams wrote in his diaries of his hatred and despair at his behaviour, getting drunk and making an absolute fool of himself.

Over the years I have done a number of interviews with actors about their work, but I think this is the first time I can say an actor's version of his work was grossly understated. This was 90 minutes of pure theatre, where one actor held the audience spellbound, and you came out believing what you had seen. No wonder David Benson won the Scotsman First Award at the Edinburgh Fringe with this show.

David hopes to be back in the area soon, and we will let you know when and where.

Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh
Thom Dibdin, The Stage, August 10th 2006

David Benson cruises through his show about Kenneth Williams with such a fresh sense of spontaneity that there are times when you would be forgiven for thinking that he was making it up on the spot.

Yet it is the precision which makes it work. The long moment looking into a mirror, face relaxed, only to snap into one of Williams’ trademark grimaces. Benson’s effortless use of simple lighting to conjure Williams to life from the darkness.

The result is compelling. Eschewing the cheap route of anecdote, he builds a character so real that the viewer brings their own memories of Williams to the stage. And for all that, Williams was witty, well read, poetry loving and highly intelligent, Benson also shows the infuriating old queen, always looking for love but unable to accept it and who had, at least latterly, little time for his public.

In amongst this, adding to its edge and maybe a glint of reflection, there is Benson’s own story. Of having a truly mad mother and witnessing the moment when they came in a white van to take her away. It is all exceptionally well worked. And never afraid to look at sorrow, as well as joy.

Rosehill Theatre, Whitehaven. Saturday 1st April

Darren Connor, News and Star

Unbelievably it is 18 years since Kenneth Williams died and it’s 10 since David Benson attempted to get his larynx around William’s distinctive voice in his one man show Think No Evil Of Us.

For the price of one ticket you get several shows – you get Benson’s stunning interpretation of Williams’ life – particularly his full waspish nature – and Benson’s teenage years growing up in Birmingham with Frankie Howerd and the cast of Dad’s Army as his constant companions. His Spike Milligan-inspired chemistry homework was particularly impressive.

One of the problems with focussing on Kenneth Williams is that we know all there is to know, so it is testament to the talents of David Benson and the originality of his approach that this show has endured when many far paler imitators have failed.

This show works because Benson is not afraid to push the audience into the darkest of parts of Kenneth Williams’ life and engage us with his own story, which was littered with its fair share of teenage torment.

Beginning with Benson practising Williams’s famous gurning and ending with a lament to the man who couldn’t accept himself via the greatest version of All Things Bright and Beautiful I have ever heard – this was a night out that combined the best of the best. David Benson as Williams was excellent but David Benson as David Benson was stunning. Feel free to insert your own double entendre here…

David Benson will be performing his one man show as part of the Carlisle Arts Festival which runs from 26-29 March 2006.

 

 

David recently found this old review and sent it to me. It's a lovely write-up, so better late than never, eh?

Beyond our Ken.
Martin Hannan meets one man who has carried on dreaming.

The Scotsman, 27th August, 1996

Picture by Dan Tuffs.

PERHAPS it was the so-familiar nasal whine of the impersonator, perhaps it as simply the name Kenneth Williams - wit of some genius, camp star of (Carry On movies, pain-racked homosexual - on the flyer thrust into your hand with such winning aplomb that made you track to St John's Church Hall that Monday evening.

Perhaps it was just the social cachet of being able to say you were at a world premiere which made you join 70 or so other souls gathered for the performance of Think No Evil Of Us, the first one-man show by the actor David Benson.

Or perhaps you thought that this was just another Fringe show and you might kill an hour. It doesn't matter what took you there, with your peroxide-blond short crop. What matters is that as I watched you, within minutes you were totally engrossed in this show, that you were first reduced to helpless tears of laughter then stunned into silence, eyes as big as saucers, as Benson recreated the mirth-giving genius of Williams then portrayed his sad painful, angry death.

4pm, 10 December 1975. Somewhere in the north of England a small boy with a totally dysfunctional mother and a long-suffering doctor father sits to watch Jackanory, the story-telling slot which ran on BBC1’s children’s hour for aeons. Millions of children do so every night, but for this boy tonight's Jackanory is very different and special. For he, David, just 13, is the author of tonight’s story, The Rag and Bone Man

David had written it for Spike Milligan to read, but unfortunately it's the turn of the master of camp Kenneth Williams to do the reading. So the following day when he should have been the envy of his school "chums", young David gets tarred with the Williams brush.

"Some kind of a poof, are you, then?" was the nicest remark. A wounding question, especially for one whose nascent sexuality is already taking the road less travelled. David's humour, as usual gets him out of real trouble-He didn't think "infamy, infamy, they've all got it in for me" (Williams in Carry on Cleo). He hadn't seen the film then. But he did think of fame. And even then he knew what he wanted to be.

April, 1988. Williams overdoses, dying in horribly painful circumstances. Having completed a drama degree David is now living in Edinburgh, working in a bookshop between occasional sorties on to the stage. Williams's ignominious death shocks him.

David recalls: "Obviously since the Jackanory story I'd followed his work. But it was only after he died that I really came to appreciate him."

Later that year at a reading at the bookshop, David decides to "do" Williams, reading from his diaries in that familiar voice. A huge roar of recognition goes up. Slowly he begins to learn more about the man behind the Williams whine. He learns to love Williams, something the poor man never did himself.

Festivals, 1990 onwards. The Grassmarket Project. David joins Jeremy Weller in that astounding series of inspired theatrical works featuring drug abusers and homeless vagrants, to name but two groups. David's acting career is not going forward, however, because the project is something apart from mainstream Scottish theatre.

August 1994. After nine months in New York with his partner Lindel, working on writing "playlets" based around his own life, David returns to Edinburgh for the Festival. The following month he sees a South Bank Show on Williams. Click. A play about Williams mixed with his own biographical material.

"It was the culmination of a lifelong search for something to release my creative energies. It was the turning point of my life. I decided I couldn't go on any more not doing the thing that I had always dreamed of doing since I was five years old, which was that I wanted to be a performer on stage on my own.

The show begins to take shape in his mind. But only there.

7 September 1995. Another Festival and nothing on paper. David's diary records the exact day when he did finally set out fully to research and write Think No Evil of Us.

Hogmanay 1995. The show is not coming together. David is going to tear it up. The old demon is back - laziness . . . no, fear of doing the dream. Half an hour into the New Year on crowded Princes Street David bumps into an old friend, Neville Chamberlain, rector of St John's Church, who promises him a Fringe slot and makes him vow to do the show. Sometimes divine intervention works, even for agnostics.

19 February 1996. The writing is going well. Decision time. The entry is into the Fringe programme. No going back now.
August 199G. Rehearsals have been a lonely business. David's solo show has no director. "I wanted this to be my vision. Original and different. I didn't want to do what you're supposed to do."

12 August, 5pm. Pre-show nerves He sits like a coiled spring. "This is the most important moment of my life. Everything I've ever been and done is leading up to this minute. "It's the edge of the diving board thing, you know. And I know I will have to jump."

5:35pm. Taking my place in the audience I watch as David jumps. The show is brilliant. The scene from his schooldays with ogre teacher Mr Brindley a masterpiece. I think: "If there's a funnier eight or nine minutes on the Fringe I'll eat tomorrow’s Scotsman.

Then comes the death scene. And Benson has it - that gift of going from comedy to tragedy in a few moments and not losing the audience. We sit, mesmerised.

6:30pm. The applause is long, loud and vigorous. On the terrace outside the congratulations are hearty and sincere.

A few friends gather. Shortly afterwards it's time to "chill out", the period every actor knows about when the adrenalin rush ceases to have its effect.

10:40pm. One of David's biggest fans is Viv Devlin, one of the hardworking team which has made BBC Radio Scotland's Usual Suspects. She has arranged for him to feature on this, his opening night and theirs.

David's slot is well received. Loud applause roars again David bounces off the stage, joking: "I'm a star, I'm a star." He is knackered but happy. He reflects: "For the first my life I feel complete. It is the most incredible night of my life."

It's now 21 years on in the life of David Benson and his history with Kenneth Williams. It will run for some time more. All that life, all that pain, all that dreaming - but it is just another Fringe Show, of course.

 

'Pocket Essentials: Carry On Films' by Mark Campbell (available through Amazon)

'A stunning one-man show exploring the author's intense fascination with the actor, incorporating impersonations, anecdotes and personal reminiscenes, and finishing on Williams' (alleged) suicide. 5/5'

The Stage, 24th April
Peter Hepple
King's Head Theatre, Islington

It is nearly seven years since David Benson first performed this show on the Edinburgh Fringe and many one-person productions have flowed into oblivion since.

The fact that this one has gained such acclaim is due both to the quality of its writing and performance and the fact that, although it is inspired by Kenneth Williams, it is not about him.

In fact, it is more about Benson himself, who once won a children's story-writing competition on BBC Radio, which was read over the airwaves by Williams and kicked off his interest into this most individual of actors.

The first section finds Williams at his mirror rehearsing his repertoire of grimaces and expressions, the last gives a better idea of Williams the man than most biographies could manage. Here he hosts a dinner for his friends in an Italian restaurant, during which his bitchy campery and domination of the proceedings embarrasses his so-called chums and fellow diners and includes a virtuoso recital of his recurrent bowel problems.

But Benson as a real person is even more interesting. Neatly dressed and only slightly camp, he brings his childhood and schooldays to life in a masterly fashion and even contrives to induce some audience participation in a way that is strikingly successful.

Yet it is the curse of his mad mother that lingers in the mind as he tells of a terrible tragedy treated

 

London Theatre Guide, April 3rd
Amanda Hodges
King's Head Theatre, Islington

David Benson's comic tour de force is back again in London, this time making a welcome appearance at the beleaguered Kings Head where the far from mellifluous tones of Kenneth Williams will once more be happily rasping through the auditorium.

Williams had one of those richly memorable voices that just begs for impersonation, but, good as Benson undoubtably is at capturing every vocal nuance and mannerism of the man, this is by no means just a night of straightforward mimicry. What lends this show its distinctive appeal is the way Benson fuses his presentation of a clever, complex individual with pivotal incidents from his own childhood, thus adding real depth and illumination to his completely engrossing portrayal. The first section is pure Williams, continuing in this vein until the man's self-pity leads Benson to seamlessly ease himself out of character and begin reminding the comic of his many blessings.

The famous star of a legion of Carry On films and justly celebrated for his skills as a raconteur, Williams felt fundamentally unfulfilled, applauded for the camp persona he created whilst overlooked as an actor. He seems not have fully appreciated the particular niche he'd created in the nation, beloved as a British institution. Suffering from chronic bowel problems, he was often at the mercy of his health - something Benson chronicles with witty perspicacity in an entertaining restaurant scene that features Williams, as the dinner guest from hell.

Moments sad and sublime jostle for attention as the contradictory elements of the comic's character are filtered through an impersonation both affectionate and perceptive. There's still some contention as to whether or not Williams's death in 1988 was a misjudgment or a deliberate act but the emphasis here falls on the latter interpretation which seems persuasive in the light of the Diaries. It's an assured, highly engaging performance, beautifully timed and deeply poignant that manages to pay tribute to the man whilst still probing the melancholy underbelly pervading his life.

Amanda Hodges Web site

Here is a selection of reviews that came in after performances of Think No Evil of Us when it was performed in Edinburgh during the festival of 1996.

This show was first staged in Edinburgh during August 1996 as part of the Fringe there, and ran at St John's church Hall from 12-31st, notching up 18 shows. There then followed a UK tour starting with the first set of performances over the 5th November - 7th December 1996 at the King's Head, Upper St., London - a total of 33 shows. From here is was into the new year and on to Birmingham Rep (incidentally where Kenneth Williams was in a number of productions early in his career). It was here, from the 17th December to the 11th January (David's birthday!) that a further 23 shows were performed, and then the whistle stop tour occurred and the rest of the country got to see the show - a total of 284 in all!!!!.

 

THE GUARDIAN
30th December 97
Michael Billington

Lyric Studio, Hammersmith

"This is the black box in which we are burying it," says David Benson glancing round the Lyric and speaking of his much-travelled, one-man show about Kenneth Williams. It's well worth catching this remarkable entertainment before it expires even if you have ambivalent feelings about its subject.

I first saw Williams playing the Dauphin to Siobhan McKenna's Saint Joan in the West End. I couldn't believe that this earnest, pale-faced young actor was the same person I'd heard doing outrageous voices on Tony Hancock's weekly radio show. What happened in later years is that this highly versatile and intelligent young man turned into that dubious thing, a celebrity trading on a vein of affronted camp on panel games and chat shows that, inwardly, he despised.

Even Benson, whose admiration for Williams is much less equivocal than my own, cannot help moralising about him. He gives us, in generous measure, the many different facets of Williams: the sensitive poetry-lover, the high-camp public performer investing even the simplest phrase with a salty innuendo, the private man wracked by physical pain and self-doubt. But he also turns on his subject, accusing him of whinging about being unloved even while he was publicly adored. This leads to the most fascinating passage in the show in which Benson explores his own fascination with Williams.

It dates back, we discover, to his school days when he submitted a story to Jackanory that ended up being read by the mercurial Ken. Benson's early life acquires strange echoes of Williams's: the realisation, in the school showers, of his sexual preferences, and the exasperated, sometimes murderous love he felt for a mother deemed clinically insane.

It is a measure of Benson's ease that he is able to talk about such intimate matters to a gathering of strangers. But it also lends resonance to his portrait of Williams. In the final section he gives us an impression of Williams noisily dining with his chums in an Italian restaurant and displaying his characteristic mixture of brilliance, rancour and self-loathing before going home to die alone.

"How," Benson asks at the end of the show, "can you accept love from others if you don't love yourself?" That, he suggests, was the source of Williams's tragedy. My hunch is that Williams was also the victim of an entertainment industry that wanted only one thing from him - a nostril-flaring camp that denied his true gifts as an actor and his genuine complexity as a human being.

 

DAILY EXPRESS
19th September 97
Robert Gore-Langton

Think No Evil of Us, a homage to the great Kenneth Williams, is the best one-man show in town. David Benson does a wonderful impersonation of the great man at the height of his celebrity. But the show really takes off when Benson becomes himself and recounts his own schooldays, his camp tastes and the day Williams read out his award-winning short story on Jackanory.

The recollection of his school days - the morning assembly led by the vicious Brummie headmaster is superb - mixes with his childhood talent for impersonation. Benson has got the entire cast of Dad's Army off to a tee. The point is that Williams is right there in front of you - embittered, petulant, very funny, and obsessed with his bowels. His coarseness, beauty of spirit, spitefulness and camp humour are all wonderfully recreated. This show is a labour of love, so go along and stop messing about.

 

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH
23rd Februrary 98
Charles Spencer

Ooh, Matron, you mustn't miss this carry on

David Benson's wonderful one-man show has finally - and deservedly - made it into the West End, where it opens tonight. A huge hit two year's running at the Edinburgh Festival, this will be its last ever season, and if you've missed it so far, I can't recommend it too highly. Benson has come up with a rare show that is as endearing as it is funny. It is also in its own way remarkably original.

The piece begins with the best imitation of Kenneth Williams you are ever likely to see. Benson perfectly captures the prissy pursed mouth, the look of outrage, the quavering crescendos of nasal indignation. The jokes and smutty double-entendres are a joy, and a poignant reminder of what a fine, distinctive talent we lost when Williams took an overdose of pills in 1988.

But the show is much more than impersonation. It is an act of homage and also a strikingly personal confession. When he was 13, Benson wrote a story for Jackanory, and it was Kenneth Williams who read it out on TV. These facts lead into a blissfully funny description of Benson's schooldays, including Assembly under his hilarious Brummie headmaster, and a moving account of Benson's mother's mental illness, which eventually led to her committal.

None of which has much to do with Kenneth Williams, whom it gradually becomes clear Benson never met. But Benson's gifts as a mimic are so fine (he casually throws in Frankie Howerd, Maggie Smith and the whole cast of Dad's Army), and his personality so engaging that you remain enthralled throughout.

The final section, in which he reverts to impersonating the comedian, is outstanding. We watch Williams entertaining his friends in a restaurant, and becoming increasingly desperate, especially when discussing his chronic bowel disorder in demented, disgusting detail over the spag bol.

Here you begin to sense Williams's scorching self-hatred, the appalling lovelessness of his life, and this often hilarious piece suddenly achieves a tugging sense of regret and loss. Benson offers a tour de force of impersonation, but his quirky show is also blessed with singular compassion.

INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY
18th September 96
Matthew Sweet

(NB This was the first review of Think No Evil of Us to appear in the national press)

There are two shows in town that stage the similarly pill-popping final moments of Kenneth Williams, united with ex-colleague Tony Hancock in eventual suicide and an aggressive contempt for Sid James. Aidan Steer's Kenny Carries On (Diverse Attractions) is a thoughtful, sparky piece that approaches its subject with affection and precision. Unfortunately, it does not have the power or the emotional complexity of its competitor, David Benson's exhilarating one-man tour de force, Think No Evil of Us: My Life With Kenneth Williams (St. John's Church Hall, Princes Street). Benson never met his idol, but at the age of 13, won a story-writing competition and watched Williams read his work on Jackanory. Benson's mastery of his subject's every nuance and inflection ensures that the performance administers a multitude of tender, familiar shocks. Here, Williams lives and breathes in all his camply pompous tragedy, but the piece is not just artful bootlegging. As Benson interweaves uncanny re-creation with confessional autobiography Think No Evil of Us gains a startling intensity unmatched by anything on the Fringe. It is unforgettable and inspirational theatre that has the audience cheering in admiration.

 

FINANCIAL TIMES
11th March 98
Alistair Macaulay

Mimicry and morality

How extraordinary - and how heartening - to find Think No Evil of Us: My Life With Kenneth Williams in the West End. For this one-man show, written and performed by David Benson, is almost anti-West End in its whole mind-set.

Those who go expecting an array of jolly Kenneth Williams absurdities, or a sweet giggle down memory lane, will be disappointed. This show is often very funny; but if you go only wanting to laugh you may sometimes squirm. It is about mimicry and Englishness; it is about how public characters and ordinary people connect; it is a daringly structured example of Me Generation methods at their most serious; and it ends up being a morality play. Kenneth would have cringed. More sad he.

For, from the first, Think No Evil of Us reminds us of some of the more bizarre features and contradictions of Kenneth Williams's persona. It takes us into Williams's private life (now known from his diaries and the reminiscences of others) - and yet no one who knew Williams solely as a public entertainer can really be surprised to observe his offstage ravings here. For Williams - remember his contributions to Just a Minute? - really was this odd in public: capable of being affectedly superior and affectedly common in a single sentence, both joyously camp and coldly pompous, and almost always rampagingly solipsistic.

Sometimes to listen to Williams was to attend a mad scene. One reacted by laughing, but with a certain disquiet. Just how real was his craziness? And yet, however unique he seemed, one always recognised something in him: Kenneth Williams was the object-lesson of where Englishness and camp intersect. In particular, Think No Evil shows - sometimes funnily, sometimes poignantly - how full Williams was of self-loathing and misanthropy, and how furiously alone he was. Somehow this isn't a surprise; and somehow, again one recognises, awkwardly, something of Williams in oneself.

David Benson spends about two-thirds of Think No Evil 'being' Kenneth Williams: the first third, and the last. In between, he is himself, reminiscing of his Birmingham boyhood. Here, too, public comedy and embarrassing private pain are curiously balanced. Benson is adorable being again the schoolboy mimic he once was, doing six characters from Dad's Army to the life in 30 seconds, and he is cherishable as his bilious headmaster taking assembly. But this romp is sandwiched between other memories: of his aggressively lunatic mother, and, in particular, of the day she was taken away to an institution. To what extent is comedy an expression of life? And to what extent a refuge from real life?

When I saw Think No Evil at the Edinburgh Festival last summer, I loved everything about it save for its ending: when Benson gives us the moral to his story. Watching it again, I think there are moments that could do with tightening here and there, but the ending now seems absolutely right. Virginia Woolf once said that 'one of the virtues of having a system of values is that you know exactly what to laugh at'. Think No Evil is about both the laughter and the values.

 

FINANCIAL TIMES
23rd September 97
Alistair Macaulay

One-man triumphs

Something astonishing happens during David Benson's Think No Evil of Us, which is subtitled "My Life With Kenneth Williams". It begins with a sustained imitation of Kenneth Williams: during which all those of us who have seen and heard umpteen Williams performances can see that Benson, while catching a remarkable amount of Williams' looks and sounds and characteristics, happens himself not to be much like Williams. Then he does an enchanting central section of autobiography: his childhood in Birmingham, his oh-so-British way of copying every comic entertainer, his own story for Jackanory and Williams's rendition thereof.

Then he returns to Kenneth Williams: Williams holding forth over dinner with friends, holding forth about having to read for Jackanory, about endless other things. This is the private Kenneth Williams the public did not see, remarkably close to the public Kenneth Williams but now more appalling than funny. And here, uncannily, Benson's resemblance to Williams has become absolute: his very face seems to have changed shape.

From the very first, though, this show is breathtaking. You hear some awful recording of one of Brahms's Four Serious Songs, and you watch Williams listening to it. The lift of the brows, the lengthening of the neck, the flare of the nostrils, these are his queenly ways of advertising his own authority. He has been a comic act so long, wielding his own studied persona, that he is now stuck that way. As the show proceeds, we see more of Williams's tricks and more of the persona; and the helpless lovelessness of his life becomes all-encompassing.

The only flaw of Think No Evil of Us is the ending. Benson has to spell out the moral for us: all about the value of love. But this is superfluous. The show has made us feel, deeply, what a life without love is like; and, again and again, has made us laugh about it too.

 

EVENING STANDARD 'Hot Tickets'
7th November 98
Barry Took

Resurrecting the spirit of Kenneth Williams

I knew Kenneth Williams for over thirty years, wrote for him, rejoiced in his talent, respected his intelligence, and was proud to be a friend. The elegance of his prose style belied his working-class background, but he could be (and frequently was) as vulgar as anyone could wish, telling the rudest jokes with great panache. His understanding of comedy made him an outstanding performer and a scriptwriter's joy.

He was crucial to the success of Round The Horne. Rambling Syd Rumpo the folk singer; Chou En Ginsberg MA (failed), the fiendish Japanese mastermind; J Peasmold Gruntfuttock, 'the walking slum' guided by 'voices'; and perhaps best of all, Kenneth's Sandy to Hugh Paddick's Julian. All were inspired characterisations. Marty Feldman and I invented these characters hearing William's many voices in our heads and he returned our inventions with interest, rarely changing a line and never complaining.

Offstage, however, he could become very terse and, as the diaries published after his death reveal, downright vitriolic about his contemporaries.

His private life was monk-like, as was his sex life. He confessed to me on one occasion that a doctor had suggested he take as a companion an ex-naval petty officer. The implication was obvious and Kenneth was shocked. His loneliness continued and it was only in public - on stage or radio or in Carry On films - that he allowed the extrovert and highly charged emotional side of his nature to have its head.

Oddly, for a bachelor, he was an excellent entertainer of children, frequently reading stories on Jackanory. Which brings us to David Benson. Benson first came into contact with Kenneth when he won the BBC's Jackanory prize for a story he had written which was read by Kenneth (much to Benson's chagrin, as it happens, because he'd hoped for Spike Milligan).

But Benson came to realise that Kenneth was special and plunged deep into the personality of the strange genius. His oral biography of Kenneth Think No Evil of Us, an award-winner at Edinburgh this year, is remarkable not only technically (the voice and the body language are breathtakingly accurate) but emotionally too, capturing the 'stop messin' about' persona and the tragedy lurking beneath.

I knew Kenneth Williams well and always felt it was impossible to impersonate him. I was wrong. David Benson is utterly brilliant.

 

Benson’s just bliss
Think No Evil Of Us.
(Assembly Rooms, Edinburgh)
Verdict Brilliant performance in unusual Comedy ****

15th August 1997, Daily Mail

Michael Coveney

You can find the following celebrities resuscitated, or dug up, on the fringe this year: Zeida Fitzgerald, Jack Kerouac, Judy Garland, Richard Burton, Marlene Dietrich and Karen Carpenter. But David Benson's invocation of Kenneth Williams is something else.

He does a brilliant impersonation, flared nostrils, basilisk stare, swivelling shoulders, cascading monologues, braying laugh and all. However, the true resonance of his already justly celebrated solo show which tours after Edinburgh and goes to London for Christmas resides in the fact that this is a proper play, not a ragbag of anecdotes. The subject is as much Benson himself as the melancholy mummer who died ten years ago. The link is beautiful.

As a lonely 13-year-old in Birmingham in 1975, Benson submitted a story to the BBC's Jackanory. He won the competition, and Williams read the story on air. Benson never met his new hero. The incident is the hinge to Benson's outpouring; about his unhappy home life, his school days -the morning assembly at which Benson plays his own crotchety headmaster is sheer bliss and his developing anger that Williams killed himself (which he almost certainly did) before Benson could tell him how much he loved and admired him. Benson's speculation is not unduly sentimental. He catches his temperament to perfection. A truly remarkable event.

 

THE HERALD, Wednesday, November 20th, 1996

Think No Evil of Us, King's Head Theatre, London

Carole Woddis

A stunning success at this year's Edinburgh Fringe, David Benson's semi-autobiographical Excursion into Kenneth Williams land is, by any standards, a tour de force. Benson's is a prodigious talent. We don't only get Williams in all his nostril-flaring, cheek-sucking comic glory. We also get Captain Mainwaring and a clutch of Dad's Army favourites, Benson's Birmingham headmaster harassing reluctant pupils into hymn-singing as well as a bunch of personal homilies thrown in.

Like a cross between Rory Bremner and a confessional on self-love, ‘Think No Evil of Us’ certainly breaks new ground, not only wicked, unnerving impersonation but personal catharsis as well. Close your eyes and Benson's swooping vowels come as close to their original high-camp owner as one could reasonably expect of any self-respecting impersonator. Benson renders the much loved Williams in all his garish exhibitionism as the underrated man of letters and the peerless raconteur as well as the monstrous bombast and dominating, deeply closeted, queer whose vicious self-loathing speaks like a throw-back from another age. A brutal portrait, it is however no more so than the comic material he spins out of a painful childhood where he avoided a mother of dangerous, not to say murderous, instability.

Benson has the satirist's unblinking gaze, be it Williams, a man he feels affinities with on several fronts, not least from the actor's reading of his teenage story on Jackanory, or the woman who gave him birth. But he also has something else: compassion. A founder member of Edinburgh's award-winning Grassmarket Project, Benson is clearly ready to fly on his own.

 

WEST END EXTRA 27th February 1998
Think No Evil of Us - My Life with Kenneth Williams - Vaudeville

Christopher Downes

A one-man show, that has been an enormous success on tour, finally arrives in the West End and it was certainly worth waiting for. I knew Kenneth Williams quite well and was initially reluctant to see what I imagined would be the usual re-creation of a star's career chronicling the triumphs and tragedies, hits and flops. But that is not David Benson's method. Although a brilliant mimic and mime (he is uncanny as Williams) capable of filling the stage with a large cast of characters, he does much more. Benson tells us the strange story of his own life with a demented mother and long-suffering father, and a moment of glory when he wins a competition to have a story of his read on TV's Jackanory. He was dismayed to learn that Kenneth Williams would read it - being a Spike Milligan fan. Ashamed of his burgeoning homosexuality, he was bounded by school boys whooping "oops, ducky" and mocking Jackanory.

He hated Williams. The suicide of Williams, however, caused him to reflect and explore this tormented, gifted man. Born in working-class circumstances in Somers Town (he never moved far, living near Great Portland Street when he died) he rose to be a national figure but was never able to resolve his personal demons. These combined with a persistent, painful bowel condition finally proved unendurable. Benson becomes a friend by the end of the evening, far too well adjusted to suffer Kenneth's fate. In one of the play's most hilarious scenes, we see Williams ruining a restaurant dinner for his friends. I should point out that he could also make an evening - when he was with his wife and friends he loved and I treasure many memories of his kindness and brilliance. How many people can hold a dinner table with the recitation of the entire 'Eve of St Agnes'?

 

WHAT'S ON, 4-11th March 1998

Roger Foss

They’ve saved the best till last in the comedy season at the Vaudeville – although you might have thought that actor David Benson had wrung the life out of Kenneth Williams by now. Benson’s unique one-man confessional first plumbed the truly depressing depths beneath the popular comedian’s much-loved public persona on the Edinburgh Fringe. He then completed a sell-out season at the King’s Head in Islington, which led to a successful national tour and a recent run at the Lyric Hammersmith. Now he returns to recreate the performance on a big stage, where his incredibly sad story of self-hatred triumphing over love still hits the right personal notes.

Admittedly, on the first night, Benson was hampered by throat problems, which meant that he couldn't quite get the same bite into Williams' outrageously camp vocal delivery - a delivery that would famously slip from fruity erudition to tarty jabber within a single phrase. But his tale, always more than just a flaring nostril impersonation of the CarryOn comic, has matured in the telling. Only the most stony-hearted will fail to be moved when he depicts Williams' final suicidal moments as the strains of ‘In Paradisium' from Faure's Requiem float in the background. "Oh, what's the bloody point!" spits the terminally miserable Williams before he knocks back another lethal handful of pain-killers.

But the show's real fascination is in seeing how Benson conjures up another man's demons in order to exorcise his own. Both men faced the abyss though the only (tenuous) link between them occurred in 1975, when the 13 year-old Benson wrote a Jackanory story that was read on TV by Williams. Based on his recently published diaries, we witness Williams on a rollercoaster to Hell, variously in full flow about philosophy, brazenly chatting up navvies in the street and behaving insufferably at a dinner party. A picture finally emerges of a deeply unhappy, sexually repressed, anally fixated egomaniac who despised his fans ("cretins" he called them) almost as much as he hated himself. Benson, meanwhile, interlinks his own nightmarish memories of a lonely boyhood overshadowed by his mother's descent into madness, which he somehow survived mentally intact by escaping into the imaginary world of radio comedy. Along the way he does some very funny impersonations of Maggie Smith, Frankie Howerd and the entire cast of Dad's Army. And there's a priceless sequence where he brings back a crusty old Brummie schoolmaster presiding over school assembly.

By publicly sharing his own painful past, Benson reminds us that you can survive the most awesome personal traumas and still laugh out loud. If only Kenneth Williams had done the same: he might well be tickling the nation's funny bone today.

 

TIME OUT 11th March 1998

'Think No Evil of Us:
My Life with Kenneth Williams'
Vaudeville Theatre (West End)

Sara Abdulla

Two years after wowing Edinburgh, David Benson's funny, unsettling, loveable one man show has made it to the West End. 'Think No Evil of Us' is far more than a Kenneth Williams tribute. Rather, it is an intimate, almost voyeuristic glimpse of the fears and weaknesses behind the hilarious facades of two very talented comics: Williams and writer performer/director Benson.

Not only does the Kenneth Williams we all knew and loved live again in every uncanny detail - those nostrils, that laugh, and, of course, the delicious, ludicrous voice - but we also meet the private Williams, the tortured, dyspeptic soul of his diaries. Side by side with these scenes runs an amusing, disturbing thumbnail of Benson himself, and of how and why he sought refuge in comedy and in Williams.

Which is the part that doesn't quite rise to the Vaudeville's relatively cavernous spaces. Some of Benson's slightly mawkish confessional moments may have worked in the cosy confines of the fringe theatres that this piece has been touring for so long, but in the unforgiving glare of a gilded proscenium arch they seem highly self-indulgent, if not slightly perverse. But no matter: when he's not doling out patronising, youth-group-leader style cod psychology ('you've got to love yourself...') Benson is a superlative mimic, a good writer and well worth a look.

 

LONDON STUDENT SEVEN DAYS Feb 27th 1998

Laurence Gibson

At the age of 13 David Benson wrote a story, 'The Rag-and-Bone Man', which won a Jackanory competition in 1975. Spike Milligan had been his teenage hero and he dearly hoped it would be him who read the story on television. In fact, Kenneth Williams was the one who dictated the piece. "It was all wrong," explained Benson, now in his late thirties,"He was far too camp an over the top ... he made the jokes too obvious." At the time, Kenneth Williams could never be forgiven in the eyes of the creative child who feared how his classmates - from a Birmingham comprehensive - would react.

Today, however, the situation is very different. Benson gradually developed a fascination for Williams, could imitate his voice to perfection, and spent time finding out about the true man to bring him to stage. "I could have rehashed the old Carry' On material - but oooh noowh that would have been boring," say Benson in his nasal, drawn out Kenneth voice. "I wanted to get away from the Kenneth all the people know and show the real man." And, according to relatives and friends of Williams', that is exactly what he has done. "There is an aged aunt left somewhere. I don't know who the hell she is, but she loved it," he claims.

In fact, his show has already attracted the likes of Sheila Hancock, Billy Connolly, Barbara Windsor and Michael Whittaker, an extremely close friend of Williams who is frequently referred to in his Letters and Diaries. The show, sub-titled My life With Kenneth Williams, began life in a church hall at the 1996 Edinburgh festival where it was spotted by Mark Golilder and David Johnson. Since, it has been presented on tour throughout the entire country. "I spent the last twelve months staggering around the UK ... I've been everywhere from the Shetlands to an empty arts centre in Banbury" he explains modestly. However, it arrives at the West End following, most recently, a sell out run at the Lyric Hammersmith and trailing a long list of plaudits.

Intriguingly, the show is partly autobiographical and tells us of Benson's own childhood. He asks his audience at one point if they have a mad mother and people often say, flippantly, 'she's completely crazy.' Benson's mother really was quite mad. "I tell them about my mother being taken bodily from the house when I was 15. She had locked herself in the bathroom and the men in white coats literally dragged her away ... It's a dramatic moment in the play, but I stick little details in that make them laugh. I'll say 'as they hauled her down the stairs the men dislodged my grandfathers water colours of the Lake District.' People laugh, but its that sort of laughter that really makes you curl your toes. At other times I'm talking as if other people are there on stage, ... the audience have to visualise it and they do" He describes a scene where Williams is in a restaurant with friends, bossing them about, telling loud stories and flirting with the waiter. "He was self-obsessed, had to hold court and not let anyone else in on the limelight" Often, Benson is unflinchingly truthful about Williams's childish, temperamental and generally insecure personality.

"He spent a lot of time brooding, but never came to accept his life and enjoy it ... You have to accept yourself, faults and all, and that's a journey we all have to go on" Williams, evidently, never did take that journey and committed suicide before Benson ever met him. "I never had the chance to tell him I loved him ...But he didn't even love himself and you cannot receive love off anyone else until you do" University, Benson feels, is the ideal place to do this. He studied Drama and Theatre at Royal Holloway between 1981-84, "You have three years to learn about yourself, how you relate to other people and to prepare to face the world ... its about having your first taste of independence." Also, when people write to him after the show for advice, he tells them to start a journal. "I write myself a letter each morning, of about three A4 sides. It really helps to unblock and clear out your mind." And that was the answer to all your troubles? "Well, I was unemployed in Edinburgh for five years, doing nothing and feeling depressed, then I suddenly thought 'one day I'm going to be dead. I'll be lying in my coffin thinking 'you had all these dreams and aspirations and the only thing that stopped you doing it was fear and self-doubt.' When you are dead you have blown all your chances. Just go out there and do it. It doesn’t really matter if it is triumph or a disaster, but at least you have given it your best shot."

 

Audience feedback

"I have never felt the impulse to write to an actor. That was before last night. Not even to my all time idol Maureen Lipman, another actress fond of Joyce Grenfell, Ruth Draper and monologues – as I’m sure you are more than aware.

Last night, after seeing your performance at The Lowry – Think No Evil of Us – I was overwhelmed and full of emotion even when I returned home. Your performance just stayed with me. I knew nothing about it, just what was in the Lowry’s brochure. What attracted me to book was that the show appeared to be about Kenneth Williams, another actor/comedian I greatly love and admire.

On the strength of this, I came along with no other expectations. I certainly had no idea you were going to take me on a roller coaster of emotions. I was happy and laughing then suddenly uncomfortable, then happy again, then taken into sadness before being snapped into humour and again into sadness. It was exhilarating. On top of this, I was relating that which I was hearing to my life too – questioning science and God, shutting myself away from the world as a teenager, having heroes I wanted to imitate, those godawful showers at school. They, invoked memories in me too. It’s the first time I’ve heard someone speak about their Mother in the way you did other than a close friend of mine who went through something similar with hers. It was yet another parallel and provocative piece of your show.

So deeply drawn into it, I wished God Bless to your Mother too when you raised your glass. I still do, 24 hrs later. It was one of the most touching and honest moments I’ve seen, especially on stage. She has a very talented son, your Mother; one who unlike Kenneth, I hope will understand that his audience loves him.

Having seen you once, I will be keenly looking out for your other shows when you are again, I hope, in the North West. I shall be singing your praises to all my friends and I was passionately exclaiming to my partner, Nick, who was equally stunned by your show, that it was heartbreaking that last night wasn’t sold out and booked solid. It more than deserved it. Nick and I have been lucky to see at least one exceptional show a year at the Theatre. A show which has stood out from the rest. Your show is one of those. So finely crafted. I cannot begin to imagine how much hard work you must have put into it.

May your talent be rewarded. From a new fan and friend. Who must stop all this gushing at once! Thank You for a Wonderful Evening"

~~~~~

"Just a note to say that I saw your performance last night at the Lowry Centre and it was absolutely brilliant. Not just the Williamseque comedy but also the acting.

Nice to see the various aspects of Williams' life portrayed in a well put together 'non-biographic' way but all we needed to know and understand about him - as much anybody did I guess - was there to see and intuit.

I shall remember the restaurant scene for a long time to come - brilliant acting, timing and impersonation.

Many thanks for a great time."

~~~~~

"...I'm only writing because I saw My Life With Kenneth Williams last night at the Lowry Centre, and bloody loved it. My second time, and maybe even better than the first. I'm sure I said it was genius when I met you long ago... but that's the sort of thing you say when meeting people, so e-mail gives me the chance to say it properly! Such a gorgeous and clever and honest and heartfelt piece of writing, and your performance is bloody spellbinding.
I think maybe it meant even more this time, cos my mum died a month ago, and it was beautiful to watch a piece of work that is, in many ways, a testament of love to your mum. So thank you for that, it meant a lot."