Theatre
An Evening with Peter Ustinov (Theatre Royal, Haymarket) Someone Like You (Strand)
Favourable impressions
Christopher Edwards
Peter Ustinov, whose 'big' personality is so hard to fit into conventional acting roles, comes into his own as a raconteur, mimic and shrewd observer of the high and low. Alone on stage for two and a half hours, he performs the surprising double feat of first expanding to fill the theatre and then contracting it down to a cosy size in order to give us the impression of conversational intimacy. Perhaps the sense of intimacy is more real than imaginary. After all, many in the audience must have heard some of his material before on numerous chat shows. But while Peter Ustinov may repeat himself, he succeeds, born performer that he is, in investing his stories with surprising freshness. It helps, of course, that they are, most of them, very good stories.
This praise, I have to admit, follows an initial reluctance to be impressed by the portly, roving Unicef ambassador with his sound liberal instincts and smoothy-chops bedside manner. What about the glibness and the traces of smug self-regard, I asked myself? These elements are there but your resistance melts very quickly. Mine host is engagingly genial in the flesh. The powers of mimicry are considerable. Ronald Reagan of course is an old turn, so to speak, but the nodding folksy hamminess is perfect and still brings the house down. But there too are Brezhnev and Mitter- rand, brought to life in an instant by some magical shift of the jowls and face muscles. This precision in taking off celebrities is applied with equal skill to Gielgud, Richardson and Olivier, but also to figures from. Ustinov's past whom we meet in his company for the first time: Russian rela- tives from the days of the Revolution, canting Anglican headmasters from West- minster School, NCOs from his army days (when he was Private `Utnov' to Major David Niven).
It is one thing to make us recognise well-known public figures — Mike Yar- wood et al perhaps do it as well. But Ustinov succeeds in populating his own early Anglo-Russian biography with in- stantly alive sketches of the eccentric and threatening personalities who have left their impression on his memory. These moments are as funny as the rest but more affecting and ringed with pathos. For this reason I found the first half more enjoy- able than the second — where Ustinov is to be found inhabiting a more worldly globe- trotting persona. But there is still plenty to laugh at, and his final impression of a flamenco guitarist (Ustinov does both the singer and the instrument) is priceless.
At the Strand Theatre Petula Clark stars in the show for which she also wrote the music. Set in a ramshackle hospital at the end of the American Civil War, this is a musical chock-full of rousing ballady num- bers proclaiming the importance of liberty, niceness and finding true happiness. Petula Clark still has that rather remarkable penetrating voice, and there are other lively performances, particularly from Clive Cater as her villainous (up to a point) husband. A jolly, cliché-ridden evening with some catchy tunes.
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