It will be 100 years next month since Kenneth Williams’ birth, and almost 30 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 one marking the centenary, and, more resurrection than mimicry, it can’t help but be striking to anyone who grew up with the raconteur, diarist and Carry On star as a mainstay of British life. There are ever fewer of us around, mind you: this is “a boomer show”, Benson admits, as strong on nostalgia as it is on insight into what made Williams tick.
Indeed the first act is more about what made 13-year-old Benson tick. In 1975, his winning entry in a Jackanory story competition was read by Williams on national TV. We see him relive the moment, mortified that he’d now be associated by school bullies with the campest man in the UK. Elsewhere in act one, Benson recounts his adolescent awakening as an exponent of funny voices, casually deploying his note-perfect Frankie Howerd, Sergeant Bilko and the entire cast of Dad’s Army.
It’s a story that tends towards an explanation of Williams’ lifelong importance to Benson. But that explanation never comes. Instead, the second act features scenes from Williams’ life: a dazzling riff during an audience Q&A about the spiritual history of western civilization; a bleak dialogue with his elderly mum, with whom he was co-dependent; and a dinner with friends at an Italian restaurant. They comprise one day in Williams’ life, and the full spectrum of what made him both beloved and insufferable.
The risk with depicting someone so thin-skinned, self-absorbed and permanently performing is that they come across like a bit of a bore. One feels for his fellow diners. Less might have been more of all Kenneth’s chat about haemorrhoids and diarrhoea. But Benson’s Williams is extraordinary: the vocal (and nasal) gymnastics a show in themselves; the facial contortions unmistakable, decades after the man’s death. And there is poignancy, too, in his evident fear of intimacy and feelings of worthlessness. It’s an arresting snapshot of an extraordinary man, and the time he (and a shrinking number of we) lived through.
