When Joanna Lumley made an excellent walrus
A Poem for Every Day of the Year National Theatre
Not the most obvious bit of casting, but it works: Joanna Lumley makes an excellent walrus. Reading Lewis Carroll’s “The Walrus and the Carpenter” onstage with comic actor Stephen Mangan, Lumley reduced an unusually glitzy Olivier Theatre audience to helpless giggles at the launch of well-connected editor Allie Esiri’s new anthology A Poem for Every Day of the Year. Like its bestselling predecessor, A Poem for Every Night of the Year, it’s mostly delicious old chestnuts with a few quirkier choices thrown in. There’s not only “The boy stood on the burning deck”, but also Spike Milligan’s spoof.
As the book is aimed squarely at young readers, it was a shame Friday’s crowd seemed to contain fewer children than celebrities. Each arrival prompted a chorus of whispers. Oh look, there’s Damian Lewis! Is that Esiri’s old chum, Helena Bonham Carter? Oh dear, it’s David Cameron.
Reading poetry is remarkably easy; speak the words. Anyone can do it, but actors often struggle, tying themselves in knots to catch each nuance and over-egging it as a result. Given this endemic professional weakness, it would be a little cruel to rank Friday’s guest readers on their efforts. Let’s do it anyway.
Top marks for cracking RSC alumna Adjoa Andoh, unafraid to use the whole stage as she got her teeth into John Agard. Mangan was irresistibly droll as ever, while Peaky Blinders’ Helen Mccrory and Howards End star Samuel West kept things sharp and understated to great effect.
Lumley was hit and miss. She read Oodgeroo Noonuccal with an atrocious Aussie accent (a bit tacky, coming as it did after an earnest introduction about colonialism in Australia), but made up for it with an intelligent take on Robert Frost’s “The Road Less Travelled”, conveying the often-missed irony behind the poem’s closing lines.
Despite his Shakespearean chops, Simon Russell Beale was mostly deadweight, reciting with a Thought for the Day lumpenness – until he gave us a blast of Prospero to close the show, and it suddenly became clear why they’d invited him.
A suggestion for the National: why not make this a weekly event, sans A-listers and hotly promoted anthology? Just 45 minutes of rousing poetry, read by any stagehands, students or melodious-voiced ushers generous enough to put in the time.
It might even develop a regular following, like the weekly lunchtime concerts at the Royal Festival Hall down the road. It shouldn’t be too expensive to run, either; Keats and Dickinson work for free, and they’re available every day of the year.
A Poem for Every Day of the Year is published by Pan Macmillan at £16.99