Goodbye Gilbert Harding
by Leonard Preston
Playhouse until Saturday October 5th
  
Gilbert Harding was a phenomenon. In 1950s Britain he was the nation's biggest television star, a combination of Simon Cowell and Anne Robinson, a larger than life figure who seemed to revel in his status as 'Britain's rudest man'. Harding was also a homosexual, at a time when it was illegal in Britain and it is the two themes of celebrity and gay life in the 1950s which Leonard Preston seeks to explore in his play.

Edward Woodward gives an assured performance showing Harding as an enigma. A man who never felt he achieved his full intellectual potential and one who came to loathe the concept of celebrity, the cycle of television shows, after dinner speeches and interviews in which he was expected to entertain, culminating in his extraordinary interview for the 'Face to Face' television programme in the late 1950s. At odds with this, if Preston is to be believed, was a man who longed to be taken seriously as a campaigner for the emerging 'gay rights' movement of the 1950s, even if it would signal the end of a glittering career.

The counterpoint to Harding is shown in his Secretary, Robert Midgeley, a superb performance by Jonathan Cullen. It is through Midgeley that we begin to sense the underground world which gay men were forced to inhabit, pulling curtains in case anyone saw an embrace, the constant fear of nosy neighbours and a knock on the door by the police.

Although both Woodward and Cullen are excellent they are rather let down by a weak supporting cast playing a series of caricatures rather than characters, the char lady, the bigoted policeman etc, and also by some poor production values. Although the basic set was very effective, giving a black and white TV feel to the evening, some of the scene changes were very clumsy and certainly affected the dramatic flow of the piece.

With a heavy dose of adult language and a central theme of homosexuality 'Goodbye Gilbert Harding' may not be to everyone's taste, but Woodward's central performance more than made up for other weaknesses in the production.

David Wootten