OLD SOHO SPEAKS AGAIN, AND WISELY
Of all the places you’d expect to see Quentin Crisp – even as a ghost or tribute – one of the least likely is a wooded amphitheatre in Suffolk at dusk, with a clear moon rising through the branches and the last birds twittering innocently to roost. Crisp belonged rather to 1930’s Soho streets, where passers-by beat him as a matter of course and even the gay clubs thought he was a bit much. So did the recruiting sergeant when war came and young Crisp thought “fighting might be a nice change of agony”.
So he stayed home while the US servicemen with their flawless complexions and dollars, “flooded in, like butter over green peas” to appreciate tarts of either sex. But life is strange indeed: in his seventies and eighties suddenly he belonged to America instead. A land where “everyone who isn’t shooting you is your friend”, and where big theatres and packed tour dates gave his wit at last the appreciation it deserved.
He was long a hero of mine for his scorn for mimsy housekeeping and the deathless line “Don’t keep up with the Joneses. Drag them down to your level, it’s cheaper”. I finally met him, just for a couple of hours , in ‘90s New York. A treat.
So of course I nipped down the road to see Mark Farrelly perform his one-man tribute, from the great maverick’s own writings, at the new outdoor Thorington Theatre. I last saw Farrelly as Frankie Howerd’s lover Denis in another thoughtful play he wrote, a two-hander (https://theatrecat.com/2020/10/30/howerds-end-golden-goose-theatre-camberwell/) so I knew his ability. Here, alone on the bare wood stage with the old Crisp’s purplish bouffant, Farrelly’s long drawl and thoughtful, unafraid silences rang true enough.
And it’s a lovely script, taking him through youth as “a minority within a minority, an effeminate homosexual” and his hopeless dream of the Great Dark Man who might love him; it goes through his painfully evolving philosophy, half pain and half joke :“If at first you don’t succeed, failure may be your style”. In a brief coda as himself, Farrelly mentions that as a catalyst in his own lowest, most suicidal year a decade back. And it is indeed one of the best philosophical jokes going.
The first half bravely ends with a dying fall, a contemplation of coming death and advancing age. After the interval, though, he is in a tuxedo on a stage on 42nd street, having escaped forever the “vast rainswept Alcatraz” of Britain. Here he spent years confidently telling the new world how to live. Again, he offers lapidary insights about keeping on through despair, and how if gay life became possible because if you lean limply against the wall for long enough, it falls. He expresses his headshaking scorn for “Pride” , preferring simply to call it style.
I had not encountered before his rather wonderful paean to human beings for our sheer courage in simply having evolved – crept out of the sea, grown limbs, learned to walk upright, moved on. No God did it for us – “You did it! “ he cries. Though as ever, the undernote is “more fool us”. But hell, “there is no salvation, only laughter in the dark”. And finally, friends, treasure his insight about us out there in the audience. “Throughout the world , a theatregoer is a middle-aged person with a broken heart”.
Excellent. Here’s to Quentin Crisp, and to Mr Farrelly for the tribute. As it roams the land, see if you can catch it.
Touring through to 2024 : next outings for Quentin Crisp Penzance & Newquay in September
http://markfarrelly.co.uk for tour details
rating four
theatreCat 