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What A Gay Day! - The Larry Grayson Story

 
Richard Beck Review by Richard Beck 4 Published: 22 Feb 2025 The Bridge House Theatre Show Dates: 19 Feb 2025-18 Feb 2025

For those of us who lived through the era of Larry Grayson, What a Gay Day, at the Bridge House Theatre, Penge, is a joyous walk down memory lane.

Adamson delivers Grayson's fascinating story with sensitivity and humour

Tim Connery’s chronological script, charmingly delivered by Luke Adamson, takes us through Grayson’s life from cradle to grave. interspersed with imaginary performances in some of the many venues where he starred; from humble working men’s clubs with audiences of local miners to the splendours of the London Palladium in front of royalty.

Grayson’s shows were littered with references to people he knew from growing up in Nuneaton. His mother was unmarried, making him a bastard child at a time when that was a disgrace. She entrusted him to the care of Alice and Jim Hammonds, though she remained on the scene and Larry knew her as Aunt Alice, not to be confused with Slack Alice, based on a lady who sold inferior quality coal of the sort her name suggests.

Adamson sympathetically reveals Grayson’s devotion to his family and the tragedies of his early years, as the deaths of those close to him mount up, including the tragic loss of Tom Proctor, his best friend from school days and the man with whom he would probably have spent his life, but he was killed at the Battle of Monte Cassino aged just 21. He lived on in Grayson’s most famous character Everard Farquharson, in company with Apricot Lil, who worked in the local jam factory, Sterilised Stan the milkman and the postman Pop-it-In Pete.

Adamson makes no attempt at impersonation but uses the manner of Grayson’s delivery to put us in his presence, assisted by the characteristic pale suit, the contrapposto stance, worthy of Michael Angelo's David, with the left leg angled, while leaning on his ever-present bentwood chair, uttering “Look at the muck on ‘ere” and “Shut that door” along with the title of this show and innuendos he spouted in seeming innocence only to be shocked at his audience's interpretation.

There is also an insight into the history of the gay movement that celebrated the de-criminalisation of homosexual acts, Grayson’s rejection by the BBC and his rise to fame as the host of The Generation Game and his condemnation at the hands of the Gay Libertaion Front.

It’s all there and under Alex Donald’s precise direction Adamson delivers Grayson's fascinating story with sensitivity and humour, though Grayson, looking down from above, might simply praise him with, “Seems like a nice boy”.

Amir Nisi

Richard Beck

A graduate in theology and education, Richard acted and contributed to dance, drama and music productions throughout his teaching career. He joined Broadway Baby in 2014 and is now our Editor-in-Chief. He usually disappears to warmer climes for the winter to pursue his passion for travel.

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The Blurb:

WHAT A GAY DAY! is the new show from the team behind THE MAN IN THE SHED, THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING FRANK, THE EAGLE AND THE SEAGULL, CHET BAKER – LET’S GET LOST and LUCKY DOG, and features Luke Adamson as Larry Grayson.

Shut that door!  Larry Grayson is back from The Other Side (no, not ITV) to tell us about his life.  Larry was the camp stand-up who became one of the country’s best-loved light entertainers with his innuendo-laden tales of friends like Everard and Slack Alice.  His actual life story was extraordinary, and here, in this fusion of autobiographical reminiscing and stand-up, Larry reveals all.  From his birth in 1923 to an unmarried mother at a time when such things brought nothing but shame, to his fostering by a hard-working miner and his family, Larry maintained an incredible drive to become a variety star at a time when variety was dying.  Drag artist, comedian, song-and-dance man, Larry did it all, but he was consigned to showbusiness oblivion by an early TV appearance.  No one, least of all Larry, expected him to become a major light entertainment star much later in life, with his shows watched by over 20 million people on Saturday nights in the 1970s and 1980s.  A gay man at a time when homosexuality was illegal, he was marginalised by his own sexuality, but was also bizarrely targeted by the Gay Liberation Front for not being what they wanted to promote.  The camp comic who paved the way for so many others, he is now in danger of being forgotten, so spend an evening with Larry, his hilarious friends, his anecdotes and catchphrases, and the humour of the decades he lived though, and find out what he did in the Rolls Royce that he could not drive.

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