Doctor Whom? My Search for Samuel Johnson

Ten years of love and adulation for the eighteenth century lexicographer and essayist Samuel Johnson have brought David Benson to the Assembly Rooms stage today to share his passion with a receptive audience. The humorous lecture offers insights into Johnson’s famous dictionary and equally celebrated biography by James Boswell before relaying a selection of maxims for life from the author’s essays.

Unfortunately Benson is woefully under-prepared for the talk, which is stuttered and disjointed. Conversational sections between quotations from Johnson are ill thought through, involving awkward pauses, and provide nothing more substantial than gushing admiration for Benson’s hero. The performer has a nervous stage presence and spends much of his time uselessly prodding or flicking through a large copy of Johnson’s dictionary, which only serves to distract from whatever slim message is being conveyed. When quotations are delivered, Johnson’s beautiful and complex language is often smudged by imprecision, rendering the meaning incomprehensible.

Having only just finished a run of his David Benson Sings Noel Coward show at the Fringe, it is tempting to say that Benson’s latest offering will improve with practice in coming days. Indeed, should he manage to become fluent in his delivery, many of the show's problems would be instantly rectified. Unfortunately it is more difficult to imagine that Benson will come up with any incisive commentary on Johnson in the final week of the Fringe and so this show is most probably doomed to be little more than a Wikipedia whitewash over the great man’s life.