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Show: Oh Hello!
Society: Edinburgh Festival Fringe
Venue: Assembly George Sq Studio Five
Credits: Dave Ainsworth / Torch Theatre Company
Type: Sardines
Author: Chris Abbott
Performance Date: 20/08/2016
Oh Hello!
Chris Abbott | 20 Aug 2016 15:02pm
Back in Edinburgh for the Fringe is Oh Hello!, with Jamie Rees in a convincing and sympathetic portrayal of Charles Hawtrey. Staged in one of the smaller Assembly studios, the production is made even more engrossing because the audience are so close to the actor.
Cleverly, the action begins offstage, with Charles Hawtrey heard arguing outside and trying to get into the theatre. Rees does the voice very well, and by the time he enters we have totally accepted him as Hawtrey, even though he bears little resemblance to the man; the voice and the glasses are enough for us to be convinced. The image of the real actor on the poster helps too, and throughout the play familiar characters are convincingly bought to life through a turn of phrase or an intonation, particularly Kenneth Williams, with whom Hawtrey had a complex and mutually distrustful relationship.
Audience members are addressed directly, very appropriate for a subject who was known to hail with great familiarIty any attractive male stranger he came across. Beginning as the still dapper star of the later Carry On films, Rees changes costume as the decline takes hold, until he is a forgetful pyjama-clad figure surrounded by bottles and rejected scripts.
Dave Ainsworth has managed to write a play which covers a great deal of ground in around an hour, and does so with great skill and economy. The play is directed confidently by Peter Doran, with some deft touches such as Hawtrey’s wariness of the water jug when drinking whisky and the way in which the photo of his mother almost becomes another character.
The simple set is effective, with the window that does not open summing up Hawtrey’s later isolation, although after extensive touring, investment in a small tin of paint would not come amiss.
Oh Hello! Is an affectionate rather than warts and all treatment, with the audience mostly encouraged to laugh at the drinking and the self-delusion, but the tone darkens later even though the full depths of the later years are only hinted at; but this is a fine example of a one-person play.
- : admin
- : 20/08/2016