Howerd’s End
The Golden Goose Theatre, 28th Oct - 31st Oct 2020
Unlike Linus Karp’s recent one man show, How To Live A Jellicle Life: a look at the 2019 Musical Cats, I didn’t need to do any homework in preparation for Mark Farrelly’s latest play, Howerds End. As the once proud owner of a ‘Frankie Says: Titter Ye Not’ t-shirt in the nineties, I have in fact been a fan of Frankie Howerd for just about as long as I can remember, (long before I discovered he was gay… and a fair few years before I discovered I was gay!!). His was a career best described by Barry Cryer as, “A series of comebacks”, and I was lucky enough to have caught him live at the Garrick Theatre during his final tour when in 1990, during the twilight of his career, he received one final unexpected surge in popularity amongst students who were discovering his anarchic surreal comedy for the very first time and, despite having a career that started in 1946, he was clearly still able to give contemporary comedians a run for their money. In fact his influence can still be felt as, despite the level of praise a number of comedians have received for their ’breaking of the fourth wall’, (most notably Miranda Hart in her titular BBC sitcom), it was actually Frankie Howerd who perfected the technique some 30 years earlier, using it to hilarious effect in shows like Up Pompeii, The Howerd Confessions, etc. Oliver Hardy might have given the camera an occasional glance way back in the late twenties and thirties, but as revolutionary as that was at the time, it was nothing compared to Frankies ability to reach out from within the television screen itself and connect with those watching, right in their own living room. Despite experiencing these recurring waves of incredible popularity, behind the scenes he would find himself continually battling demons that manifested themselves in the crippling insecurities he had about his looks, his talent, and above all his sexuality, insecurities that would haunt him right up until his death in April 1992.
This complex side to Frankie Howerd’s character is brought to the fore in Mark Farrelly’s play Howerds End, which see’s him being almost resurrected for the night by Simon Cartwright’s keenly observed performance. His rendition of set pieces from Frankie’s stand-up routines are lovingly recreated and are almost unnerving in their accuracy. It also highlights the longevity of the routines themselves which, although written by a variety of writers over the years, were tailor made for Frankie’s very distinctive stage persona, it being hard to imagine them being performed by anyone else, accompanied as they were by his own withering looks and comic asides that all came together to create something that still stands the test of time, as proved tonight by the levels of laughter coming from the socially distanced audience during some of his faithfully recreated stand-up moments that were peppered throughout the play.
Performed at The Golden Goose pub theatre, a newly opened 80 seat space in South London, the staging is kept simple but effective, with a chimney breast rising out of the centre of the stage on which hangs a rather ostentatious portrait of Howerd in a fairly austere pose, itself a reproduction of a painting that hung in Howerd’s own house. It’s a brave actor that comes out to give his rendition of a character whilst having such a potent reminder of the real person looming large behind them, but it’s once again testament to Cartwright’s performance that both Frankie’s seem perfectly harmonious on stage together.
The play opens with Howerd’s partner, Dennis Heymer, (played by the shows author Mark Farrelly), sitting on a chair by the fireside welcoming the audience to the house he shared throughout his long relationship with Howerd. Here, Heymer is now 80 years old and it’s been 17 years since his partners death. He refers to himself somewhat disparagingly, although one suspects quite accurately, as Howerd’s factotum, and he has finally decided to shut the house down as a tourist attraction, which had seen a legion of the comedians loyal fans visit ever since his death. On this final day Howerd reappears to Heymer as an apparition, and soon the scars of their relationship are revealed as Frankie finally allows his partner to come out of the shadows and tell his own story, taking us with him through key moments of their partnership, starting with Howerd’s first meeting with Heymer, then a sommelier at The Dorchester Hotel where Howard inquired if he “bowled from the pavilion end?’
For anyone who was a fan of the crumpled suit and ill fitting wig wearing comedian, the question of why this story should be of any importance to a modern day audience is of course a rhetorical one, but for anyone who missed his reign as a comedy giant, this story is not only a revealing look into the private life of a comedian who once seemed part of the fabric of post-war Britain, but it also serves as a potent reminder of this countries queer history as it’s worth remembering that Frankie Howerd had been successfully working in television and radio for twenty years before homosexuality was partially decriminalised in the UK in 1967, making the first nine years of his relationship with Heymer illegal in the eyes of the law, immoral in the eyes of Howerd’s audience, and an excruciatingly uncomfortable situation for Howerd himself. Despite the change in the law Howerd would remain forever closeted and unable to accept his own sexuality, seen as a curse for many years and leaving him emotionally crippled in affairs of the heart, despite the resilience that seemed to exist in his and Heymers relationship. He wasn’t the only star going through such agonising secrecy though, as the equally clandestine partners of stars like Dirk Bogarde, Barry Manilow, Liberace, and Rock Hudson were all assigned cover stories, such as being the “driver’, ‘personal assistant’ or ‘manager’ to the star, so that their close proximity could be easily explained to a not-always unsuspecting public. What’s left is a relationship that struggles more than it should in order to get to the good times, pain and denial a constant thread through their seemingly more fleeting moments of pleasure.
Despite it taking a little time for the right tempo to be struck during Simon Cartwright and Mark Farrelly’s initial exchanges as Howard and Heymer, both go on to skilfully navigate the complex combination of emotions that leads to a genuinely moving climax. Joe Harmston’s direction occasionally leaves his actors rooted to the spot for prolonged periods of time, robbing a couple of scenes of some much needed physical energy, but overall this is a fascinating insight into the life of the man behind the comedy as well as the partner he left to languish in the shadows. As such it becomes a fascinating snapshot of queer life in Britain during a time when many closeted couples will have been struggling with a similar chasm between their professional and personal lives. Whether the man himself would have approved of such exposure is a question that can never be answered, but one suspects with the amount of affection clearly felt by the playwright for his subject, Frankie Howerd can finally find peace, unburdened at last from a lifetime of secrecy.
