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Videotape available of Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell!

On the web site of Albemarle's of London I found the following information: Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell on Video!: This production will be filmed for release on video, providing a permanent record of Peter O'Toole's acclaimed performance in the title role. The production will be filmed over three performances on 16, 17 and 18 September. Copies of the video will be available by direct mail at a special price: £14.99 (PAL) or £16.99 (NTSC: USA & Japan) including P&P.

To secure your order please send: your name, address, postcode and telephone, with either:
A cheque/postal order for the total amount and made payable to "York Street Productions (JB) Ltd", or
If paying by Access/Visa/American Express, the card number, batch number, signature and date.
Send your order to York Street Productions (JB) Ltd, 1 York Street, LONDON,
W1H 1PZ. Your order will be despatched no later than 5 November 1999

(this information provided by one of our long-time contributers... thank you Ms. U!)

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Jeffrey Bernard's Better Than Ever

by Robin Stringer
It was as much a sentimental reunion as a first night at the Old Vic last night when Peter O'Toole resumed his special relationship with the late Jeffrey Bernard.

But whether the members of the audience were new to the drink-driven wit and wisdom of Jeffrey Bernard Is Unwell, or were old friends, at the close they rose as one to applaud the 67-year-old O'Toole's performance.
The standing ovation lasted the length of four long curtain calls - and this from an audience packed with his peers.
Kevin Spacey, Janet Suzman, Frank Finlay, Greta Scacchi, Sheila Gish and David Soul were among them, not to mention that somewhat flamboyant performer on the political stage, Peter Mandelson.
For the play's author Keith Waterhouse, who remembers only too well what a fine performance O'Toole gave when the the play had its premiere 10 years ago, the actor achieved the impossible.
"He has managed to improve a performance that we thought could not be improved upon," said Waterhouse. "One can only sit there and admire."
For Hollywood star and Old Vic trustee Kevin Spacey, who flew in from Los Angeles specially to see O'Toole perform, it was "worth every mile".

Stars' star: Peter O'Toole relaxes after his powerful First Night performance with fellow actor Kevin Spacey
"I had to show up," he said. "He blames me for having to do it. When he came here last year to see me in The Iceman Cometh, I said, 'You should be on this stage. What the f*** are you doing?' He said 'F*** off.' But he did it." Putting on his Old Vic trustee hat, Spacey added in a serious vein: "To have him back on this stage means so much to this theatre. He represents its continuity, its greatness, what it was and what it can be."
O'Toole's portrayal of his friend Jeffrey Bernard, who dedicated his life to alcohol, women and gambling, sent almost everyone into hyperbole..
"His timing was just brilliant," said MP Martin Bell. "I laughed till I cried."
David Soul commented: "To see an actor like Peter O'Toole makes you feel like a child."
Even Frank Finlay, who trained with O'Toole at RADA, had to admit he was "pretty good".
He added: "I had not remembered it being so funny."
For O'Toole himself, who made his London debut at the Old Vic in 1956 in Major Barbara, the performance will go a long way to erasing memories of his last notorious appearance at the theatre in 1980, as Macbeth.

© Associated Newspapers Ltd., 05 August 1999
This Is London
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Jeffrey Bernard Is Unwell

by Nicholas de Jongh
I cannot recall any London audience giving the lead actor in a play the spontaneous, standing ovation that they awarded Peter O'Toole for his astonishing performance as Jeffrey Bernard.

Such displays are normally reserved for musicals, in which troops of first nighters have put their money, hearts, relations and lovers. But last night's rare, rapturous audience appreciation struck me as the real thing. A rumpled Peter O'Toole wears the role, shaped into theatrical form by Keith Waterhouse from Bernard's own journalistic writings, as if it were a second skin. His mood of sardonic melancholia rises to Beckettian heights.
O'Toole, of course, some time ago first immersed himself in Jeffrey Bernard. The actor played the journalist, a chronicler of his own anarchic life and alcoholic times in 1989 and hardly stopped until 1991. But in those days Bernard, though sometimes unwell and unable to write his confessional Spectator column, was at least alive and kicking against the pricks - he even named some of them. Now that he's dead though, thanks to lashings of alcohol and diabetes, O'Toole's performance and the play itself have taken on a darker, deeper air of rumination.
Jeffrey Bernard Is Unwell has become a theatrical obituary, looking back upon the infirm pleasures of Soho, vodka, girls and betting and forward to a date with death. The scene is Soho's Coach and Horses pub, for which designer John Gunter has conceived inwardly tilting walls, which look like the figments of a drunkard's imagination and as though they might any time collapse upon the sole, locked-in inhabitant.
O'Toole's Bernard, accidentally trapped there after closing time, suffers a dark night of the soul and memory. His walk is a nice complex of a shuffle, shamble and stagger. Chain-smoking, he totters gamely around. His face remains as inscrutable as a code, his eyes are hooded and O'Toole's voice, now an instrument of infinite, expressive variety, brings Bernard's complaining tones back to life with a light comic touch. Figures from the past - too swiftly introduced and dispatched in Ned Sherrin's over-flippant, revue-style production - spark the reminiscence and fire his wit and comedy: doggedly Bernard goes where the odd erection leads him.
Bernard's humour springs from his original take upon life as the mistake he daily made, and a sport to dispel thoughts of mortality. The first, over-long half, despite the jokes that O'Toole lobs with such casual neatness in our direction, is a rambling voyage around "the enchanted dung-heap of Soho" and his drinking, racing world. The informal cat-racing though, which takes place when the weather is too cold for horses and tempts Bernard to bet and become involved in suspected cat-doping, is sheer delight.
The second half, however, becomes a tense and intense struggle over mortality. O'Toole has surely never achieved anything better on stage than in his sardonic evocation of a resigned Bernard drifting towards his end. The laughter keeps being cut off by the jab of sadness and regret O'Toole induces. So here, he exclaims, is the Suicide Coach to Beachy Head, "Book Now to Avoid Disappointment". His delivery makes me long to see him trying Beckett again.
This tremendous,virtual solo show,with four actors in efficient support, is a stark tour de force and feat of memory in which O'Toole transmutes Bernard's life of disappointment and difficulty into high, dark comedy.

© Associated Newspapers Ltd., 05 August 1999
This Is London
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O'Toole revives Jeffrey Bernard

by Alison Roberts
Peter O'Toole stumbles through his dressing room door, his feet making no more than brave stabs at co-ordinated movement. He's been rehearsing all afternoon and has a brain full of Jeffrey Bernard.

"The memory plays tricks," he says of his attempts to remember Keith Waterhouse's Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell. "It was 10 years ago we last performed it. When I looked back at the text, there were several lines I'd got the wrong way round. For a while I was convinced I had a corrupt Penguin."
When I first meet O'Toole, I seriously considered curtsying as a proper response to his lingering handshake and rather blatant stare. He refuses point blank to answer some questions (about his son, about certain theatre directors), but get him on a new subject - on something which doesn't resemble a familiar landmark on the block he's been around at least a dozen times - and he's precise, interested, funny.
His anecdotes are told with just the right balance of malice and wit, and every time I look at him I'm reminded of the Mad Hatter. He's tall, rake-thin; possessed of a quiff of still-blond hair and a high-pitched laugh which should have had him sectioned years ago.
O'Toole, now 67, is back at the Old Vic, where he made his West-End debut in a 1956 production of Major Barbara and gave his notorious Macbeth. The decision to revive Jeffrey Bernard, as it were, took place at the man's funeral.
O'Toole was there with the "hip-flask mob"; he doesn't drink very much any more - his own decision, though heartily approved by his doctor - but his friends do. These days, funerals are a high spot on the O'Toole social calendar. "I buried nine in less than a year, a few years back," he says wheezily. "They're dropping like flies, it's the end of an era ... I've played all the graveyards. Kensal Green. Putney Vale. Golders Green."
Bernard, meanwhile, was late for his own service, thus confusing the mob who found themselves at a bookie's funeral by mistake. From this excellent beginning, the event began its inevitable descent.
"One of Jeff's last coherent sentences was: 'I never want to hear one of Beethoven's nine f***ing symphonies again,'" says O'Toole. "And his brother Bruce of course insisted on playing a bit of Beethoven. He brought his own kit, a keyboard thing, and it was all cha cha cha. It just got funnier and funnier. Ned (Sherrin, who directs Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell) and Keith were there of course, and we just looked at each other and said: we must do it again."
O'Toole admits that the play has changed - conceptually, not literally - since Bernard's death. (Those fans of the original production will be glad to hear that the "egg trick" remains intact). But when I ask how exactly, he shoots me a look of unconcealed irritation. "We're finding out how, right now. In rehearsal."
Do you think his life was, you know, tragic? "Not in the least. He was bravely doing exactly what he wanted to do." This included unplugging himself from life-prolonging dialysis: the doctors wouldn't continue the treatment if he continued smoking, and Bernard the champion smoker - like Peter O'Toole, who consumes fags until his whole body gently smokes - wouldn't comply. "He said, 'If I stop smoking, I just won't be me. I'd be incomplete'."
And what about the drinking? Bernard and O'Toole were soul-mates in drink - they both loved it with a defiant and genuinely inspiring hedonism. When I ask what O'Toole might say to those young actors who are often seen around town in the grip of similar, but Nineties, hedonism, he replies: "Whoop it up. Carry on whooping!"
"Jeff hated drunks," he adds. "He loved getting drunk, loved being with people who were getting drunk, but loathed being drunk. It only takes one drink too many. It's as though someone's clicked a switch and this charming bloke who's talking about blah is suddenly snarling and growling and snorting."
O'Toole is still an iconoclast, a whooper-it-up on an intellectual level. Superficially, he conforms to some ghastly theatrical stereotype (lots of kissing, joshing with the understudies, that famous cigarette-holder), but he's in no way part of the establishment.
He calls the National Theatre "the Fourth Reich" (Trevor Nunn being the fourth artistic director in the NT's history) and the Barbican, the "Barbarous"; he's unintentionally hilarious in a brief aside on the subsidised theatre's culture of complaint. "Oh, they're always whining and blabbing, aren't they? Boring. Begging bowls out and all that. I find it very boring indeed."
O'Toole describes himself as an adopted Londoner, though he was brought up in Leeds. The point at which we briefly discuss other cities, and travel, is the point at which he's - well, either sending me up, or taking his famed love of PG Wodehouse to its natural conclusion. How does he like, say, New York? "I used to love going there. In the late Fifties and early Sixties ... I hear it's getting better, now. People are wearing clothes again."
You look at photographs of O'Toole in the Fifties and early Sixties, when he was young and part of that rackety London scene, and he's quite beautiful. His vast autobiographical project (we're two volumes down and he's just left RADA) is all about nostalgia, and most people under 40 are likely to have some difficulty naming an O'Toole starring role which isn't Lawrence of Arabia.
He retains his image as a stage hero, but for many this is based only on reputation. His books, however, are much more than showbiz memoir ("the publishers wanted gossip, who'd f***ed who and all that. I said: if you want that sort of thing, you've come to the wrong man") and his name still elicits interest from pretty much everyone who visits the theatre.
The two daughters he shares with ex-wife Sian Phillips will come to see him in the play. Kate "doesn't move an inch from Ireland, generally. Her entire emotional life is in West Galway. I admire her so much: she has decided that that's her life." And after Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell, he'll finish the third instalment of the autobiography and complete the novel he's itching to write.
"This is quite the most extraordinary thing that has happened to me in my life," he says, immediately animated. "I woke up one morning with a notion, and the next with yet more notions. I got to a point where going to the loo was a bit of a hazard because ideas would keep coming."
His driver has arrived to take him home, so we stumble back into the outside world, lungs heaving. Peter O'Toole says, "lovely to see you, baby," for all the world like Austin Powers. And then he's off, back to his tea party.

© Associated Newspapers Ltd., 28 July 1999
This Is London
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Remembering Jeffrey Bernard

It came up at Jeff's funeral. Peter O'Toole said, "Let's do it again." You know how long these things take, and we've been messing about ever since trying to get the whole act together with the original West End cast, and directed by Ned Sherrin.

Originally, I just wanted to write something about Soho, then I fixed on Jeff who was Mr Soho at that time. I was at the opera, thinking of some kind of form for this thing, when I remembered about a guy who used to be casting director for Granada who fell asleep in Jerry's club in the lavatory one night, woke up and found himself locked in this darkened club.
He rang Jerry and said, "Let me out, Let me out." Jerry said, "Don't touch anything, I'll be round in half an hour." I thought that would be the perfect premise. Jeff sitting there locked in the pub just reminiscing about life in general.
Jeff loved the play, although I think he only saw it twice, but he used to go and bask in the bar and receive his fans. And vodkas.
He could be very charming and very irascible. It depended largely on the quantity of vodka. He was a rude bugger, of course. You know the phrase "he doesn't suffer fools gladly"? - Jeff didn't suffer anyone gladly.
Jeffrey Bernard Is Unwell is my favourite piece of work, because it is a wonderful vehicle for Peter O'Toole.
In rehearsals he's already noted that it has a new patina on it. There is a darkening at the edges. It was originally a requiem for old Soho, but it's now become a requiem for Jeff too. Some of the lines are melancholy and poignant, remembering all these people are gone. I realised right away it was going to be a cult play. But after ten years there must be a lot of people who haven't seen it.

© Associated Newspapers Ltd., 28 July 1999
This Is London
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Jeffrey Bernard Is Unwell

Comedy by Keith Waterhouse. Directed by Ned Sherrin.
Peter O'Toole returns to play the title role in the revival production of Keith Waterhouse's comedy which enjoyed a successful 12 month run at the Apollo Theatre in 1989/90, returning to the Shaftesbury Theatre in 1991 for a two month run.
Set in the Coach and Horse pub in Soho, this comedy is based on the life and writings of Jeffrey Bernard who used to write for the Spectator magazine.
Joining Peter O'Toole will be Royce Mills, Timothy Ackroyd, Sarah Berger and Annabel Leventon, all members of the original West End cast

Winner of the 1990 Evening Standard Theatre Award for 'Best Comedy'

Extracts from the reviews:
"... On its first outing, a comically rueful recognition of mortality and decline gave depth to a show that finds Bernard - heroic boozer, gambler and womaniser - locked for the night in his favourite Soho pub, the Coach and Horses. As he chronicles, through a stream of hilarious anecdotes, a life devoted to stylish self-destruction, he extemporises a mock-obituary of himself and waxes elegiac about the Soho characters who have gone the way of pickled flesh. Now that the Eternal Landlord has called closing time for Bernard, too, the play - which once again stars the incomparably funny and emotionally layered Peter O'Toole - can't help but feel a shade darker and more melancholic... Elegantly raddled and looking like a disreputably unmade bed, O'Toole gives a performance that in its squiffy hauteur, is a wonderful mix of the rackety and the fastidious... Waterhouse's bright idea of presenting Bernard, between flats, and trapped overnight in a pub where he unpacks his mementoes, allows you to appreciate the essential homelessness of a boozer on this scale. As well as the wit of the man, O'Toole communicates the sadness and the moral acumen..."
The Independent

"Peter O'Toole and Keith Waterhouse perpetrated one of the great comic creations of our time, I said, ten years ago and I'm not about to retract that opinion now. Jeffrey Bernard is unwell, the Spectator announced quite often, when his Low Life column failed to appear. Usually because of some such incident as this one: thrown out of his flat and locked in the Coach and Horses public house after closing time. And, of course, with unsupervised access to a vodka bottle. This is rollicking monodrama, Beckett on a bar stool, as our hero's life flashes before him and he celebrates the amazing joke of being born. O'Toole is seedier, slightly slower but just as charming as before lightly spewing his elegant paragraphs of self-deprecation through a constant swirl of cigarette smoke... We had a lovely evening, full of wit, anger, brio and forlorn stoicism on Bernard's enchanted dungheap of old Soho."
The Daily Mail

"...Keith Waterhouse's play, based on the Soho boulevardier's excess-ladened life and his brilliant Low Life columns for the Spectator, has returned for a short season. Ten years on, Peter O'Toole, who played the title role originally, is Bernard again. He wakes from a drunken slumber to find himself locked in his favourite pub, the infamous Coach and Horses... O'Toole has eased into the shambolic role with style. He fits the part now, his voice lifting in tones of amazement when the combined forces of ex-wives and officialdom, plus the battering ram of vodka, all combine to assail him. O'Toole, himself no stranger to a past of excess, invests a sweet tragedy in his portrayal of Bernard. The poignancy of it all is that Jeff finally succumbed to excess. But Waterhouse's play will long remain as a testimony to a memorable character who hurled two fingers at the massed legions of political correctness."
The Express

"...Peter O'Toole's performance as the shambolic and alcoholic journalist Jeffrey Bernard is a classic. He first played the role in the West End between 1989 and 1991, when Bernard was still alive, and has now returned to the role at the Old Vic. On press night, he won an immediate standing ovation, and he deserved it... True, O'Toole does not quite give the performance he did 10 or eight years ago. I must record with some alarm that this is the third time in two months I have attended a West End production where the speaking is amplified. If memory serves, this was not necessary in this play before. On Broadway, amplification is widespread, with vile results. Yet this remains a superlative performance. You hang in delight on O'Toole's sudden dips into his port-soaked chest register, on the wonderfully hopeful upward flicks with which he ends so many sentences, on the enchantingly casual falsetto notes and tiny, crumbling catches in his voice. And you watch every part of his body: the mouth that hangs slightly open before he stuffs a cigarette into it, and that then suggestively waggles the cigarette up and down as he regards a pretty nurse; the eyes that twinkle and glare as if they had already passed through both the Inferno and Paradise, the slow walk that seems so momentous, the torso that arches and sways and sprawls. O'Toole is a master of phrasing. The sheer length of the multiple sentences he sometimes rattles off in one breath is one kind of marvel, but finer yet is his punctuation..."
The Financial Times