Review - Do You Think That’S Wise? – 6Th Feb 2019

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Review - Do you think that’s wise? – 6th Feb 2019 It’s 1972, John Le Mesurier is in his dressing room at BBC Television Centre during a break in a dress-rehearsal for Dad’s Army. A journalist from the Daily Express is on his way to do an interview. As Le Mesurier waits, thinking what he will say to the journalist, he looks back at his life. It is a tough thing to recreate a well-known modern figure. If you recreate someone from a painting, like Henry VIII or someone known only from an old black and white photo, you have a lot of leeway. For people famous in the Television age, we tend to know how the person looks, talks and acts inside out. Some like John Le Mesurier are particularly hard to capture, they are so distinctive. Previous portrayals of him in the bio-dramas about Hancock or Hattie Jacques etc have fallen short. Julian Dutton gives a tour de force. Physically, he has a good resemblance to Le Mesurier, on top of that, Julian Dutton sustains an amazing performance: every word, every gesture, every look, every phrase, every mannerism is John Le Mesurier. To watch the show is to feel like one has met Le Mesurier in a bar or in one of his beloved jazz clubs. Part “an audience with” part “confessional” it can switch from laugh out loud anecdote to heartbreak and anger over the tragedies in his personal life. I flatter myself I know Le Mesurier’s life fairly well, but many of the stories were new to me. His friendship with Tony Hancock is explored and mention made of some of the many famous people he met from Alan Turing to Ronnie Scott. One of the things that always struck me about the cast of Dad’s Army is how different they looked off screen in their fashionable 1970’s clothes. In a telling line in the play, Le Mesurier reflects how his career was saved by being cast playing someone in the past. I have seen some great one man shows – Pip Utton playing both Churchill and Hitler, Guy Masterson doing Christmas Carol, Jamie Rees as Charles Hawtrey, Ashley Christmas in ‘Becoming Hattie’ (Jacques). It takes a special kind of bravery to even attempt such a thing, to make it work is truly the magic of theatre. Julian Dutton is mesmerising on stage, the audience applause at the end was prolonged and appreciative. John Le Mesurier would surely have loved Julian Dutton’s performance. At the end, do we know what made John Le Mesurier tick? To find out, go and see the play yourself. THAS rating – 5 Stars. Tom Dommett, Editor, The Missing Page – The Magazine of the Tony Hancock Appreciation Society. .

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