Writer: Keith Waterhouse
Director and adaptor: James Hillier
Stepping into Soho’s Coach and Horses can feel like stepping into a Jeffrey Bernard shrine: photos, cartoons and posters commemorating the old Soho great and the original production of this Keith Waterhouse-scripted comedy line the walls. So, there’s no more appropriate place for the man himself, embodied convincingly by Robert Bathurst, to regale the punters.
After yet another night of boozing, columnist and eternal low-lifer Bernard has been locked into the pub, having fallen asleep on the toilet. The play loosely follows his attempts to get hold of the landlord, Norman (the play’s self-acknowledged ‘Godot’) but is really a chance for Bernard to show off his best anecdotes and musings about life, the universe, and the fact it all comes down to boozing, women and the races.
Bathurst is a captivating Bernard, capturing the man’s essence without going wholly into pastiche, and excels at conveying the horrors of the people he encounters – not least the regular pub-going folk outside London. It’s a good thing, too, as the play needs a raconteur to drive over the general lack of plot in order to keep some kind of momentum, especially as the site-specific setting necessitates only a small walkway– meaning that Bathurst is always nose-to-nose with his audience and is unable to do more than walk around, sit and then get up again. In lesser hands, the audience participation this engenders could feel forced, but is instead great fun, moving from cat racing to egg tricks to questions on what defines an “alcoholic” to quips about Valentine Dyall.
It’s not a play that necessarily needs a revival: as a depiction of a lost way of life (that of both Soho and the socially acceptable alcoholic) it can feel dated, and there’s little here that will feel new to Bernard-reading regulars. Bathurst also stumbles sometimes in his lines, and the line between his gentle slurring and a genuine difficulty in getting to grips with the verbose script is perhaps too often blurred.
Nevertheless, it’s a good glass and a half above many one-man shows, and the combination of Bathurst’s natural charisma and stage presence with Bernard’s inestimable talent at finding the comedy of ‘low life’ are electric. This evocation of Soho’s lost pub life might not be for everyone, but it’s a corking night out.
Performances run at both 7.30 and 10pm; go at 10 for the closest you’ll get to the real Jeffrey Bernard experience (and order a vodka soda).
Runs until 21 November 2023
