Dismal Fare

Sun Herald

Sunday January 1, 2006

COLIN ROSE

HARRY'S CHRISTMAS

Old Fitzroy Hotel, Woolloomooloo. Until January 14. Tickets $27/$19. Cheap Tuesdays $16. Bookings 9294 4296.

Critic's rating: 4/10

HARRY (Iain Sinclair) has two gifts under his Christmas tree: a can of pilchards and a bottle of Scotch. The pilchards are for his cat; the Scotch is some Christmas cheer he's bought for himself. He needs it.

With four days to go before Christmas, Harry has his gaze fixed firmly on his navel and he doesn't like what he sees. He's heading towards 40 and desperately lonely. "Where's me crumpet for Christmas?" he asks himself (Harry and his author, Steven Berkoff, are British), a turn of phrase that goes some way in explaining why he's single.

The can-do side of Harry's personality is at war with the side that is crippled by self-doubt. He urges himself to reach out, to call a long-lost friend, an ex-lover from years ago, anyone but his mother, anyone who will prick the bubble of his loneliness and self-absorption.

Berkoff covers the short distance between funny-pathetic and sad-pathetic in an 80-minute monologue that is an extraordinarily bleak wallow in self-pity and intellectually and thematically bare.

Berkoff is notorious in the UK for issuing a death threat to a carping critic. I think Harry's Christmas is mostly pointless drivel.

Will it be pistols at dawn, Steven?CR

© 2006 Sun Herald

Back to News Index | Back to Home