Join a magical mystery tour of theatrical history
Performer Dickie Beau brings his new production, ¡Showmanism! a celebration of performance in its many forms, to Bath this month and as JEFFREY DAVIES discovers, it is likely to be something of an eye-opener for many theatre-goers
HAVING encompassed Shakespeare, song, contemporary dance and opera, award-winning Deborah Warner’s inaugural season as Ustinov Studio artistic director concludes with a celebration of the art of performance itself when a “quite unique” show takes to the stage in Bath next week.
Devised and performed by the equally uniquely talented performer and actor Dickie Beau, ¡Showmanism! is a brand new production which guides audiences on an “off-road journey” through thousands of years of theatre and its history.
Expect revelations on everything you think you know about performance. From Greek theatre to puppetry, opera to Shakespeare, clowns to curtain calls and nightclub drag queens to politics, as live lip-syncing sensation Dickie Beau channels the voices of legends of stage and screen – Ian Mckellen, Fiona Shaw, renowned theatre director Peter Sellers [not the actor] and a host of actors, writers, lecturers, teachers, impressionists, audience members and other enchanting voices from the shadowlands of performance – in what is billed as a love letter to the origins of performance itself. In all its permutations.
Created from interview footage that Dickie Beau has personally collected through conversations with his subjects over many months, in
¡Showmanism! he “plays back” those conversations through his own body in a surreal theatre trip that promises to be, by turns, both hilarious and haunting.
Dickie Beau dazzled Ustinov Studio audiences this summer as the mercurial Ariel in Deborah Warner’s highly acclaimed The Tempest. And now he is about to deliver a live audio visual treat which talks to audiences about art, about the world and about being human. About almost anything.
As actor Nathan Lane so succinctly put it: “Dickie Beau is an extraordinary artist and brilliant actor. Every time he steps on a stage something amazing happens.”
So, a uniquely talented man in a truly unique show. A fair assessment of Dickie Beau the performer and his new production ¡Showmanism!? He laughed modestly at the description I presented him with.
“Well, really every show is unique isn’t it? I would say that this one is a form of performance that is not common on the landscape of life so, in that sense it is unique, yes,” the most welcoming and friendly actor replied, accepting readily that he was unique as I put it, but rather questioning of my use of the word “talented” in that phrase.
“I wonder about the word ‘talent’, Jeffrey. I really do. You know, whether or not it is slightly elitist. It is not the central precedent for me, I must say. But our culture seems to individually apply the word talent and talented to certain types of activity over others. We have the high arts, the low arts and some that are not art at all. “I am of the opinion that ability, or talent as you put it, depends on the quality of concentration. Sometimes people may have little capacity to concentrate in that situation. “But I do think really it is something that anybody can learn,” the graduate of the University of Manchester and Milan’s Teatro della Contraddizione, added.
Dickie told me that he knew he was “different from others” – as he put it – from an early age so it is not surprising that his very “meta” and “physical” show should reflect this difference. His would be described in today’s vernacular as a different take on the world.
“The show contains all kinds of different thoughts and ideas that are mine. Just take the presentation of the voices of people like Ian Mckellen that I do. He is in my show but he’s not the real Ian Mckellen. What I am doing is not a straightforward documentary presentation of the voices of people,” Dickie told me while admitting readily that he didn’t wish to say too much about the show for fear of spoiling it for the audience who have yet to see it and appreciate it for themselves.
An erudite man, what central message – if any – would Dickie like the audience to take away with them as they file out of the theatre at the end of the show?
“There is probably more than one message. I don’t really want to give too much away and I wouldn’t want to try to guide the audience too much.
“But there are things in it, philosophical questions, that the audience can take away, think about and talk about. But it’s not for me to tell them what. It’s for them to decide.”
Dickie told me that he had
enjoyed playing Ariel in The Tempest in Bath last summer.
“It was a wonderful production. I had a wonderful time playing the role.”
Dickie Beau has an international reputation for his solo performance work and has toured extensively with his repertoire of solo theatre shows. His numerous theatre credits include the aforementioned The Tempest, Dick Whittington, Botticelli in the Fire, Dickie Beau: Unplugged, Re-member Me, and An Audience with Willy Little.
On television he has appeared in The Sandman, Aids: The Unheard Tapes and The Windsors. His equally impressive film credits include Bohemian Rhapsody, Colette and The Real Charlie Chaplin.
Does Dickie have a particular discipline which gives him the greatest satisfaction?
“No, I don’t have a favourite genre. I like the theatre, television and film.
“When you’re an actor in theatre you are responsible for communicating the story to the live audience. But when you’re working on film or television a lot depends on the process of editing so the responsibility is not so great.”
And Bohemian Rhapsody, the biopic about rock band Queen in which Dickie played anarchic radio DJ and TV presenter Kenny Everett.
“Yes, it was a good role to play. Kenny Everett was such a charismatic person. His shows on radio and television were watched and enjoyed by millions of people. He was one of the few figures in our culture who stood out as being a bit of a misfit. And I recognised we were kindred spirits,” he said.
Involved in the new show with the versatile performer is dramaturg and eminent dance and opera critic Rupert Christiansen. How would he describe what audiences will “witness” when ¡Showmanism! takes to the stage?
“That’s a very good question! Dickie Beau is a poet and he’s a little bit mad and he lives in his own wonderful world. This show, which we’ve been working on now for the best part of a year, is going to be more like a sort of funfair really, a sort of crazy roller-coaster, a ghost train and magical mystery tour through everything that theatre, performance and acting is. But it is not a Wikipedia entry. I want people to come and have an amazing, surprising and, possibly, a bit shocking but also very, very funny experience,” he told me.
Quite a unique show in terms of presentation and performance?
“Yes, absolutely. I can guarantee that nobody will have ever seen anything quite like it. It’s very, very subversive and very, very strange,” Rupert said with a laugh.
¡Showmanism! almost defies categorisation, I remarked.
“Well, I think that is the originality of it, Jeffrey. It almost re-invents the form. It’s something between an eightminute show by a stand-up comedian with a drag artist and a lecturer. And I would emphasise drag artist and not a drag queen. Not a Danny La Rue. Dickie dresses up in all sorts of very, very strange ways. He is really difficult to categorise.
“In this show he is going to tell people an awful lot of things that they don’t know about the theatre and what it feels like to be an actor. But not necessarily in chronological order.
“He will also raise some philosophical questions about what are we all doing here in the theatre watching a show and why am I impersonating all these different people!” Rupert said, before telling me the show’s title ¡Showmanism! is a pun on Shamanism, which is something Dickie Beau is very interested in.
So where did the idea for the show’s format come from?
“Oh, from Dickie. He’s a very, very erudite, widely read, extremely thoughtful and quite, quite unique person. I have a more conventional knowledge about the theatre and acting. We have a good collaboration although I sometimes have to pull Dickie back to Earth when I think his ideas are getting too crazy! But the audience will have a really marvellous time if they’ll sort of admit to it,” he laughed, saying the show, which had a sort of Harry Potter quality to it, was one all ages could enjoy and appreciate.
A feature of ¡Showmanism! is lip-syncing.
“Lip-syncing comes from the 1960s when pop songs were lip-synced instead of sung live. But in this show Dickie goes to interview people – including famous actors – and then acts them out rather than imitates them. He dresses up and impersonates these people; parodies them in an almost spooky way. It is like he is inhabited by these other voices.”
¡Showmanism! is playing Bath Theatre Royal’s Ustinov Studio from November 11 to December 10. Tickets can be booked on 01225 448844 or online at www.theatreroyal. org.uk