What a treat! Peter O'Toole gives the performance of a lifetime, here, depicting the brilliant but alcoholic journalist, Jeffrey Bernard. This is not the first time he's played the role. In 1990, this play, so incisively written, won London's Evening Standard Award for Best Comedy and was reprised for a limited engagement which began this July 27 and ended September 25, 1999. The Old Vic, a very large theatre in Waterloo that has two balconies, was packed to the rafters with an audience that responded enthusiastically to O'Toole and his merry cast's every move. The standing ovation he received at the end was the greatest hurrah -- and most deserved.
The best comedy comes from pain. We meet Bernard in his home away from home, a pub called Coaches and Horses, where he reminisces about his life devoted to excessive drinking, gambling and women (and occasionally, writing). The play derives its name from the fact that when he did not turn in his column, which was a frequent occurrence, his editor would insert in its place, "Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell."
The four member cast, Royce Mills, Timothy Ackroyd, Sarah Berger and Annabel Leventon, all of whom play a number of parts, pop in and out, offering tart and pointed testimony and the other point of view to Bernard's ramblings. One of his four wives, after their discussion, always leaves delivering the line, "You make me sick!" Bernard often made himself sick, so much so that at one event when he was expected to make a speech, he passed out in front of everyone.
Royce Mills is hysterically funny in every part he plays and it seemed, at times, that the two have a private joke going. But it is O'Toole, who never leaves the stage, that captivates with his wit, irony and even ironing. Yes, at one point, he appears to be ironing a shirt -- not a fit occupation for Lawrence of Arabia! The set is designed with the walls on angles that are askew, giving an off-balance effect to everything.
