Reviewing My Life with Kenneth Williams – Bringing a Storyteller to Life through an Extraordinary Tradition | stage

IIt will be 100 years next month since Kenneth Williams was born, and nearly 30 years since David Benson created his hit show about him, Think No Evil of Us — versions of which he has toured ever since. Here’s another centenary remembrance that’s more commemoration than tradition, and one that can’t help but be striking to anyone who grew up with the storyteller, diarist and Carry On star as a mainstay of British life. There are fewer of us around, mind you: This is a “boom show,” Benson admits, as powerful in terms of nostalgia as it is in terms of insight into what made Williams special.

In fact, the first chapter is about what made 13-year-old Benson tick. In 1975, Williams read his winning entry for the Jackanori Story Contest on national television. We see him reliving that moment, horrified that he was now linked by the school bullies to the camp guy in the UK. Elsewhere in the first act, Benson recounts his teenage awakening as a voice-over actor, making casual use of his pitch-perfect observation on Frankie Howerd, Sergeant Bilko, and the entire Dad’s Army crew.

It’s a story that tends to explain Williams’ lifelong importance to Benson. But this explanation never comes. Instead, the second act presents scenes from Williams’ life: a dazzling aria during audience questions and answers about the spiritual history of Western civilization; A depressing conversation with his elderly mother, on whom he depended; And dinner with friends in an Italian restaurant. They represent a single day in Williams’ life, and the full range of what made him both endearing and insufferable.

The danger in portraying someone who is thin-skinned, self-absorbed and always performing is that he comes across as a little boring. One feels for fellow diners. It was probably much less so than Kenneth’s conversation about hemorrhoids and diarrhea. But Williams-Benson is exceptional: the vocal (and nasal) gymnastics are a show in themselves; The facial deformities are unmistakable, decades after the man’s death. There is also poignancy in his apparent fear of intimacy and feelings of worthlessness. It’s a riveting snapshot of an extraordinary man, and the time in which he (and a decreasing number of us) lived.