Diary of a Nobody review - SkinnyFest1
| 14 Aug 2006
Well, this is What Happened To The Likely Lad who didn't fall feet first into a primetime BBC1 cop drama. While James Bolam pays the bills by playing the same world-weary character he's been honing for 40 years, Rodney Bewes has aged far more gracefully and here plays the genial Mr Pooter in his own adaptation of George and Weedon Grossmith's 1892 novel.
Pooter, a gent of the late-Victorian era with a strongly eccentric streak and a penchant for bad puns, is not exactly a nobody. Instead, he is just an honest man whose life is comprised primarily of long periods of tedium. The daunting task that faces Bewes is to convert the tedium into theatre. The only actor on stage and thus the sole focus of attention, he has not even an interval to collect himself, and often it shows when he forgets a line. But largely it's his remarkable energy and smiling charm, delighting in the minutiae of his character's existence, that make Diary of a Nobody worth watching, even if the set is rather ramshackle and some of the puns make even the old ladies in the third row wince.
Pooter, a gent of the late-Victorian era with a strongly eccentric streak and a penchant for bad puns, is not exactly a nobody. Instead, he is just an honest man whose life is comprised primarily of long periods of tedium. The daunting task that faces Bewes is to convert the tedium into theatre. The only actor on stage and thus the sole focus of attention, he has not even an interval to collect himself, and often it shows when he forgets a line. But largely it's his remarkable energy and smiling charm, delighting in the minutiae of his character's existence, that make Diary of a Nobody worth watching, even if the set is rather ramshackle and some of the puns make even the old ladies in the third row wince.
Assembly @ George St, until August 28 (not 14, 17), 16:50, £12/£11 (£11/£10). Rodney Bewes.