Reviews

To Be Frank**** (four out of five stars) 0ldham Coliseum~ Jan 21st

By Steve Tims
The Big Issue, 11th-17th January 2003

It is often said that all great comedians are manic depressives.

"I think it's something to do with the public disappointment when they meet them in the street and find they're as miserable as everybody else," explains actor/writer David Benson. "You read Kenneth Williams' diaries and think, 'How can someone who brought so much joy to people be so tortured?"'

Benson became something of an overnight sensation back in 1996 when his one-man show Think No Evil Of Us - My Life With Kenneth Williams won an Edinburgh Fringe First. The play, which also enjoyed a successful regional tour and West End transfer, dramatised extracts from the Carry On star's diary, inter cut with scenes from Benson's own life.

As a child Benson won a story competition on Seventies children's programme Jackanory. Spike Milligan was meant to read out the winning entry but dropped out due to illness, replaced by queen of camp Williams: Benson swiftly found himself a school laughing stock. Kids can be so cruel. "That was the obvious connection between us but there were others ... the tendency to self-pity when there's no need for it. "

After the success of the show, the Birmingham-born actor had the theatrical world at his feet. Critics asked, 'Who next? Charles Hawtrey? Larry Grayson?'

Keen to avoid the tag of "that man who impersonates dead, camp comics" Benson's follow up was a show about Princess Diana's funeral. Given the contentious subject matter, it received a mixed response.

"It was seen as quite shocking at the time. Diana's perception has changed over the years.: When she was alive she was a harlot, when she died she was a saint. I don't often get asked to do it but I think it's become more relevant; all the recent Royal Family tribulations have added new layers to it. It's also about the audience and how they fitted into that event.

Benson is very keen on audience participation: He begins To Be Frank with a Q&A session about the wig-wearing comic. "A trap a lot of people who do biographical shows fall into is to show their subjects on the last night of their life, reminiscing. By initiating a friendly discussion we build up a picture of him based on the audience’s collective memory."

The actor then launches into a spirited tirade against the world of the B-list celebrity. There are many of us who'd dearly love to attack Davina McCall with a cheese grater or ram Graham Norton's BAFTA where the sun don't shine; but few of us would care to announce the fact on stage.

However, there's method in Benson's madness. After the Princess Diana experience he found himself out of work: Necessity forced him to take a boring office job - an experience which made him deeply depressed. "I do the rant to show how warped your sensibilities become when you feel jealous of other people's success. You become bitter and twisted without realising it. Though it looks like I'm attacking these celebrities, what I'm really doing is attacking myself. That's the point; if you give hate to the world, all you're really doing is giving it to yourself.

Kenneth Williams was something of an expert at the latter (his final diary entry reads "What's the bloody point?") Though Frankie Howerd was an insecure, self-absorbed worrier, he ultimately realised his career wasn't that important. Benson thankfully learned the same lesson.

"I'd denied myself a lot of love by obsessing over my career. I don't want to be a tortured comedian. I want to make people laugh and enjoy it."

Scots Gay, Martin Walker **** (four stars)

David Benson was responsible for a sell-out show about Kenneth Williams a few years ago, then a little later, a show about Princess Diana's funeral. This year he does Frankie Howerd. Except he doesn't. He does David Benson. And the show is none the worse for that.

After a hilarious opening monologue, which lasts about ten minutes, he stops, turns to the audience and asks them what they think. An open debate then ensues, with occasional words of wit and wisdom thrown in from Benson. This guy would make a really cool university lecturer, he can control a room brilliantly, even when esteemed members of the audience like Janet Street-Porter decide to disagree with him.

But we learn much more about Benson than Howerd. He does a hilarious skit which involves him killing off celebrities one by one; the likes of Cilla Black and Graham Norton were lampooned. (We were supposed to be repulsed but I just wanted to join in.) Those celebs sold out years ago to crap. David Benson hasn't made it big because he has refused to do the same. He got an office job instead. Never the less you wonder, just a little, if the next big thing at the Edinburgh Fringe will be a show starring Graham Norton on the life and work of David Benson.

 

Nick Awde, The Stage, 20-26 August
Frankie Howerd had his ups and downs like the rest of us, but it was lucky for posterity that his career was regularly resuscitated long after it had died a natural death. And the definition of success and its shelf-life seems to be the real theme of David Benson's new one-man show.
Starting with anecdotes about the elusive comedian's life, Benson leads us into double-entendre/ catchphrase heaven. Peppered with Howerd routines, a witty Q&A session with the audience becomes a show within a show. On this night, discussions with comic chanteuse Dillie Keane and a guy in the front row who met the great man analysed a performer's wariness of praise and insecurity for the future.
Benson then launches into re-creating a long lost sketch from the fifties, taking in Kenneth Williams (Benson's previous subject), formative writer Eric Sykes, and Howerd's mental state at the time - at which point Benson suddenly holds up a mirror to the vagaries of his own career.
I've seen better impressions, but Benson has done his homework well on one of the more complex characters of comedy. Although needing further development, this is a cracker of a show that has the potential to go where few shows have gone before. Unmissable if you're a Howerd fan.

Amanda Hodges, Edinburgh Evening News, 21st August

Howerd homage a success
Four Stars (out of four)

David Benson is not exactly an unsung hero but his comedic gifts are definitely sheltering on the wrong side of the spotlight. As publicity material for his new show emphasises, after triumphing with shows woven around Kenneth Williams and Diana's funeral, Benson thought he was on course for the bigtime. But clearly fate had other plans in store and necessity has propelled him temporarily back into an office job.

He's long resisted the siren call of Frankie Howerd, whom he vocally resembles, but he has now succumbed and is back in Edinburgh with a wonderful show that manages the difficult feat of being both extremely funny and genuinely poignant too.

Concluding with a great sketch of Howerd in his prime, Benson proves again what a first-class entertainer he is; a man who may impersonate "a finite number of comedians" as he puts it, yet endows everything he does with real warmth and originality. Titter ye not, this is truly irresistible.

Michael Coveney, Daily Mail, 17th August

Verdict: David Benson reveals himself as Frankie Howerd **** (four out of five stars)

David Benson, having already linked himself with Kenneth Williams, forges a more tentative, but just as cunning, alliance with the late, great Frankie Howerd.

Drawing in the audience's own memories of the sad-faced clown, he skirts cleverly around Frankie with parallel tales of triumph and disaster, all the while worrying about his career, just as Frankie would have done.

There are great riffs about Graham Norton and celebrity envy (even murder), ending with a fantastic Frankie routine. Deceptively and skillfully constructed, the show is another post-modern winner for Benson.

 

Janet Street Porter, Independent on Sunday, 19th August

The tragedy of a comic genius

His first Fringe hit exposed the bizarre life of Kenneth Williams. This year David Benson has turned his attention to the late Frankie Howerd. Janet Street-Porter is impressed.

I met Frankie Howerd in 1973 when I was presenting a daily radio show for LBC. Sent to interview him in his dressing room at the London Palladium, where he was topping the bill in panto, I nervously waited for hours before being finally admitted to the inner sanctum. I don't know who was the more tortured by the experience, Frankie or me.

The place was a total tip, half-eaten meals covered every surface, filthy underwear and discarded booze bottles lay forgotten on the floor. Frankie was in a dressing gown that had seen better days. His toupee looked like a squirrel from Mars that had crash-landed on his head. But I will never forget my encounter with my hero. It consisted of a lot of "yes, no, yes, really? ooh ... ah ..."

When I played the tape back Frankie had said nothing of any note, except that he was superstitious about having anything in his room and rehearsals were a trial which he loathed. But if only I had had a camera. The body language revealed everything.

David Benson's new one-man show at the Edinburgh Fringe starts with a sketch which encapsulates the horrific indeterminate, dithering insecurity of Howerd perfectly. In a recording studio an exhausted orchestra have had 14 unsuccessful attempts to record a Sinatra song. Frankie has stormed off and the producer is trying to placate all and sundry. Suddenly he spots young Nobby by the tea urn, who is sent to the master's dressing room to whisper sweet nothings in his ear. Soon the show is back on the road.

David Benson not only provides us with an uncanny rendition of Howerd's mannerisms, but he brilliantly conjures up that gruesome Fifties showbiz world with its Val (Parnell), Dickies (Henderson and Valentine) and of course Alma (Cogan).

Four years ago Benson took Edinburgh by storm with his tour-de-force show Think No Evil of Us based on the bizarre life of Kenneth Williams. Again not only did he fit into the skin of the camp genius perfectly, but he provided us with an astonishing glimpse into the tortured world of a man who was more obsessed with his bowel movements than almost anything else.

Benson won awards and toured Think No Evil of Us for two years. When I saw it in Edinburgh I was knocked out. I'd done a couple of TV shows with Kenneth as well as a radio commercial, and it seemed that Benson had managed not only to impersonate Williams faultlessly but had developed the idea of a tribute show into something opinionated, insightful and acerbic.

I missed his next endeavour, based on Princess Diana's funeral, which received a mixed reception. Now he's back, with his subject matter again a dead comic icon. This show isn't an easy ride, there are bits that don't work, bits that are frankly flat and slightly embarrassing. But compared to most of what's on in Edinburgh this year, it's a gem. It hasn't had a great reception because it's not a bended-knee tribute. It's a narrative interwoven with the story of the stop-start career of David Benson himself.

The highlight of the whole show isn't about Frankie, but features Benson culling all the second-rate people in the entertainment industry he despises. Norton gets buggered to death with his own BAFTA trophy followed by the ritual assassination of Carol Vorderman. I was in fits of laughter. However not all the crumblies in the audience were so captivated. For the finale, Benson morphs into Frankie once more, performing one of his classic sketches written by Eric Sykes.

This show needs a lot of work before it could play anywhere else. It's like watching a project in development. But Benson is wrong to moan about his failure to arrive on television. He belongs in the theatre because that's where the best of his ideas work. He has realised that the British obsession with nostalgia is a double-edged sword. We have a rich comedy past, but we need people like Mr Benson to debunk it for us.

 

Audience feedback

"Myself and my partner came to see your show in Epsom last week and thought it superb. We saw Think no Evil at the Guildford Mill Studio a few years ago and I wrote to you which as I am now also sending you an email is bizarre as I have never sent any other actor/t.v personality etc any letters but there you go. It was a shame there were not more people at the Epsom show but you didn't seem to be affected by it and we just cracked up when you chose your stooge and yes would you believe it he's blind - ideal for comedy ! We particularly enjoyed the bits in the show about personalities you have met along the way and the sort of people Frankie Howard was friends with back in his heyday."

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"I saw your show at Canterbury 20th Oct 01. It was great. I enjoyed every minute of it. I thought it was clever, funny, dramatic and taught me more about Frankie Howard. I was so sorry there weren't more people in the audience - only goes to show what dumb bastards Kentish people and students at the Uni' are. They wouldn't recognise a good show if you painted it on the inside of their glasses.

I wish I'd seen 'Nothing but Pleasure.' and will look out for to Ruth Draper on radio 4. Thanks for a great evening....."

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"You were wonderful tonight. (Of course to a similar compliment Mae West replied "I'm always wonderful at night!). After a few dreadful days for me your show was a real tonic. In fact my flab has never been so gasted!

Forget the size of the audience - they loved it - you are working up a very interesting individual style which you seem to hone and perfect over time. All the really big stars did / do that first.

Keep working on the DB project - I think its a new and valid art form and will emerge from the chrysalis to the astonishment of all."

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"...What I particularly liked about the show, when I saw it, was that it was so much more than an "OOoh, look! I can impersonate Frankie Howard" show - I loved the humanity and the sense of failure that everyone experiences from time to time, and actors more than most. The same intensely personal touch, which nevertheless served to universalise the experience, which you brought to the Kenneth show. Oh shit, that sounds really wanky, doesn't it? What I mean is, that I've enjoyed both shows hugely, and look forward to seeing them both again. I was impressed by the risks you took, in turning so much over to the audience; and yet never was there a sense that you were not in control of the piece."