Jeffrey Bernard Is Unwell

I returned to Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell very recently, only having seen the TV version, but was lucky to secure the "better" (2h 3m) version somewhere else.

I agree the Soho of Jeffrey Bernard is probably gone but in any big city there is a Soho.

If you just look hard enough.

In the west end of Glasgow, particularly Byres Rd, this is filled with bohemians aplenty

A testimony to just how good this is: Amazon.UK is STILL selling this 2nd hand for £50!!! BTW if you want to watch an equally good performance of POT watch Dean Spanley or my talks with Dean Spanley.

Regards to all And when is O'Toole getting the bloody Oscar

Keith Waterhouse's tribute to his own very good friend is not a play that is to be attempted by the faint hearted. Its demands upon the main protagonist are severe. Peter O'Toole keeps on the right side of mawkishness as he recounts the memories of a vodka sodden journalist, Jeffrey Barnard. Jeffrey Barnard's binges would, upon occasion, lead to his missing the deadline for his weekly column in the political weekly 'The Spectator' when his Low Life column would be replaced with the terse euphemistic title of the play.

The play is really a consummately delivered monologue. It is a lament for a Soho that has now passed. All the bohemian characters have now been replaced by wannabes, striking poses rather than living lives. Jeffrey Barnard could easily be dismissed as a boring old conservative but this danger is easily averted by the thick vein of madcap humour. This play is hysterically funny as Jeff recounts his views on women, wives, ex- and present, and his passions for gambling, horses and drink and hostelries. A puritan would not enjoy this, but its portrait of an unrepentant roue is beautifully paced and it is not without its moments of genuine pathos. I do urge you to see it.

Jeffrey Bernard was a legendary bon viveur in London, with a passion for drink, horses & women. He was a regular in the Coach and Horses pub in Soho, immortalised in satirical magazine Private Eye.

This play, written by a friend of his, Keith Waterhouse, imagines Bernard locked in said pub overnight: his reminiscences range from the poignant to the hilarious, and are illustrated by characters played by the supporting cast.

Nonetheless, this is essentially a one-man show, with O'Toole on stage throughout and on tremendous form. This captures the definitive performance of a hugely entertaining play.

The trouble with alcohol is that it preserves The Arrogance of Youth in a pickle of boorishness, warps reality and postpones the onset of maturity. An alcoholic's selfishness is unthinking and comes so naturally and seamlessly that one tends to allow the drunk a latitude that one extends to children and comedians. Thus the Heroic drunk is applauded for their stamina, lauded because they are, occasionally, entertaining to other drunks and indulged because they reflect the prevailing state of mind. To the sober they are boorish, arrogant and pathologically selfish, almost to a fault. And this is the problem with this play. Peter O'Toole does a great job but I'm left feeling a bit uneasy about his performance knowing that the play could actually be called 'Peter O'Toole is unwell.' We go along with the character and laugh the laughs of the drunk which aren't, in fact, funny to the sober. They rely on that drunken arrogance that sneers at commonplace conversation about umbrellas and that childish humour that thinks cat-racing is funny. Waterhouse does give some cues for pathos but the women who are sickened by Bernard's behaviour and the poignancy of his having to move flats again, are drowned in the alcohol and fag smoke and swept away by the psychopathology of the drunk. This is actually a Tragedy rather than a Comedy - but you try telling them that down at the Coach and Horses.

Jeffrey Bernard lived a remarkable boozy life full of highs, lows and downright bad behaviour, and it would have been all too easy to create a production lifting his own written accounts verbatim. However, Bernard's own columns were often bitter, maudlin affairs that would not have resulted in a compelling production. Keith Waterhouse on the other hand, did an amazing job of separating the wheat from the chaff from the Spectator 'Low Life' columns, and in doing so provided the script for the most entertaining 2 hours you could hope to observe. Peter O'Toole was perfect for the part and managed to blend humour, wit, anger, melancholy and pathos almost effortlessly.