miles

Miles Jupp as David Tomlinson. Pictures: Piers Foley

The Life I Lead

Birmingham Rep Studio

*****

Every so often along comes a little gem, a production which is a pleasure and an absolute joy to watch, a theatrical delight.

James Kettle’s script is clever and witty, giving enough glimpses into the private life of the late David Tomlinson to sketch a complete picture.

Yet any script, no matter how good, is merely words on a page until it is brought to life on stage and Miles Jupp does that quite brilliantly.

He is well known as a stand-up, a regular on comedy panel games on TV and radio, including being presenter of Radio 4’s The News Quiz, where, incidentally, Kettle is the lead writer, but he has also built up a considerable body of work as an actor in films, TV and stage and this is all about Jupp the actor – allied to the comedian’s deft touch for timing.

Tomlinson, already a seasoned stage and film actor, became Walt Disney’s go to Englishman, whether as Mr Banks as Mary Poppins, the dodgy magician in Bedknobs and Broomsticks or the villain in The Love Bug. He made a career out of, as he put it, playing a “dim-witted upper-class twit”.

His films find new aficionados with each new generation and the title of his autobiography, Luckier Than Most, might suggest a charmed, near perfect life, but luck is relative and can be both good and bad.

Tomlinson’s persona was the genial, immaculately dressed, English gentleman with a ready wit and easy charm, and he admitted himself that he was ever the eternal optimist, yet behind his amiable nature was a life that must have stretched even his optimism to the limit. 

Tomlinson

David Tomlinson

For a start, as a young man he had a stammer, somewhat of a drawback for an aspiring actor, and he had a difficult relationship with his solicitor father, Clarence, a cold man who preferred to be called CST and who thought David would never amount to much, regularly telling him to his face. He grew up without much in the way of parental love from him and later in life David was to discover his father was a bigamist with two families.

Tomlinson was an RAF pilot instructor in the Second World War, and trained the glider pilots for Arnhem; he knew they were probably on a suicide mission and he was teaching young men to die. His first wife, a young widow with two children, he married after a whirlwind romance in New York in 1943, killed herself and her children in a murder suicide three months after they married.

He married again, Audrey, his wife of 47 years until his death from a stroke in 2000, aged 83. They had four children and the third, Willy, was a problem child, difficult until he was eventually diagnosed as being autistic.

Jupp plays Tomlinson, or at least the Tomlinson we all knew, to perfection. The archetypal English gentleman. Jupp’s portrayal of Mr Banks could have come from Mary Poppins and he has a wonderful array of throwaway lines, asides and anecdotes to play with as Tomlinson along with digs at the likes of Peter Sellers, Sir John Gielgud and Vanessa Redgrave.

But it is in the more serious moments, when Jupp puts the flesh on the bones of Kettle’s excellent script, that we see a different Tomlinson. The genial chap on screen becomes flesh and blood, a little lost, a little vulnerable. You feel for him and the parts of his life that are not luckier than most. It is that contrast between the “dim witted upper class twit” and the very human son, instructor, husband and father which is at the heart of the production.

 

jupp2

Tomlinson’s persona was the genial, immaculately dressed, English gentleman with a ready wit and easy charm, and he admitted himself that he was ever the eternal optimist, yet behind his amiable nature was a life that must have stretched even his optimism to the limit. 

Any one man show is a mammoth task, there is no hiding place, no supporting cast and Jupp carries it off with aplomb. His Tomlinson is a cheerful chap, playing, as always, to the audience and he fills in a whole host of characters, from father to wife, Walt Disney, to assizes judge and his . . . imaginary agent Gunnell.

It is full of laughs, a witty delight but it is those moments when Tomlinson drops his guard when Jupp lifts this out of being a light hearted comedy into something of substance, a picture of the man behind the Tomlinson on screen.

Lee Newby’s setting is simple, celestial white and blues, with a changing screen and adoor with a cut-out silhouette of a blowler hatted Tomlinson, a door which can signify a change of story.

Matthew England’s lighting is subtle, gently changing with each snippet from Jupp, dimmer for serious, brighter for light hearted moments while Eliza Thompson’s music creates pauses at telling moments.

It is unusual in that it has two directors, Didi Hopkins and Selina Cadell, but whoever dis what the have helped to create a wonderful night of intimate theatre. To 19-03-19.

Roger Clarke

11-03-19

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