Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell

Keith Waterhouse
Defibrillator and M Green Productions
The Coach & Horses, Soho

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Robert Bathurst as Jeffrey Bernard Credit: Tom Howard

"Oh the self-importance of fading stars. Never mind, they will be black holes one day." — Jeffrey Bernard

The index of journalists committed to legend has been a short, and arguably diminishing, list in recent decades. The return of James Hillier’s adaptation of Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell—which follows a bibulous journalist's monologue after being locked in his favourite pub overnight—continues to justify its protagonist’s cult celebrity status.

The primary conceit of Hillier’s adaptation is its performance inside the very pub in which Keith Waterhouse’s original was set, The Coach and Horses, Soho. Waterhouse’s text has been trimmed to an hour, with the ensemble removed, allowing for Bernard to amble around the pub, crammed full of punters, soliloquising about all and sundry of his life as one of Soho’s least salubrious one-legged journalists. Robert Bathurst (Toast of London, Downton Abbey) acquits himself consummately in the title role, hitting all the requisite notes of irreverence and comic wryness the part demands. But the real excellence of his performance lies in his ability to access the more vulnerable edges of Bernard’s dissimulating wit and self-indulgence.

Part of this capacity may be attributed to the smaller scale of this production to that of Keith Waterhouse’s original, which was a huge West End success, with Peter O’Toole famously heading the bill. Instead, under the auspices of Hillier’s direction and this adaptation’s minimalist, authentic setting, the dramatic weight and generic tone of the play has undergone a subtle shift. The naturally farcical and playful tone of other, traditionally staged adaptations, while still present, has attained a greater sense of pathos when acted out by Bathurst in situ.

As Bernard brushes past the slouching stools and close-knit knees of an audience huddled around the same bar he stooped at for most of his adult life, he reminisces of his failed marriages and deceased friends before eventually contemplating his own mortality. But beyond the figure of Bernard and his ensemble of abstruse anecdotes, each fading further from popular knowledge with every passing decade in which the play’s performed, there dwells the umbra of Soho’s own change.

At the opening of the play, Bernard describes Soho as a place where one could get by with next to nothing but the kindness of others. One wonders about the possibility of such a figure existing in such a place now. Where a double vodka is more than a tenth of the average weekly pension, and every pub in the area is shut before midnight. Famous lines such as "no one accuses me of cat-doping!" and "I think I can do better than an umbrella-loser!" are particular stand-outs of this production, closely followed by his recollection of once being asked, "why do you drink so much Mr Bernard?" to which he replied, "to stop myself from jogging". References to famous figures of Soho’s past, including Dylan Thomas, Francis Bacon, Lucien Freud and Elizabeth Smart, are interspersed amid Bernard’s more personal reflections, brilliantly evoking how pubs like The Coach and Horses were once home to a wide-ranging creative milieu.

All in all, however, the return of Hillier’s adaptation of Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell at the Coach and Horses in Soho is more than a charming trip down memory lane. It is a deeply humorous, and dare I say moving, insight into one of Soho’s most mythologised figures helping himself to the better end of a bottle of vodka as he stumbles around his second home. I would urge anyone with an interest in British pub culture, Soho, journalism, bloody marys and cat-racing to go to this play. I would urge anyone with an inclination for jogging to stay well clear.

Reviewer: Flynn Hallman

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