Jonathan Barnes
The Entertainer
It seems unlikely that prize-winning author Caryl Phillips was ever a fan of The Fast Show, British comedy’s daft hit of the 1990s. But if he were ever to catch an instalment, one character in particular might intrigue him – Arthur Atkinson, a squeaky-voiced parody of the light entertainment stars of the Second World War, shot in knowingly scratchy black-and-white, whose baffling catchphrase ‘Where’s me washboard?’ provokes hysterics in his audience but makes us laugh only through its overstated quaintness. The joke is reflexive – as notions of humour change through generations, Atkinson’s fate will certainly be that of the show itself, a falling away, first into nostalgia and then to obsolescence.
Dancing in the Dark is about a real-life entertainer whose name the world has long consigned to the dustbin of history – Bert Williams, king of American vaudeville at the cusp of the twentieth century, whom W C Fields was once moved to describe as ‘the funniest man I ever
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'Heaven for him was being caressed by duchesses in gilded salons and entertaining royalty in his palatial mansion ... where he showed off his gemmed gewgaws and laced the cocktails with Benzedrine.'
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