My Life With Kenneth Williams by David BensonCircle & Star Theatre, 28 Heath Street, Hampstead, London NW3 | on 23 January 2026 and then on tour ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Review by William Russell
Photo credit: Steve Ullathorne
My Life With Kenneth Williams
by David Benson
Circle & Star Theatre, 28 Heath Street, Hampstead, London NW3 | on 23 January 2026 and then on tour
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Review by William Russell
“A tour de force if ever there was.”
Thirty years ago, David Benson launched his one man show Think No Evil of Us: My Life with Kenneth Williams to great success on the Edinburgh Fringe and went on to perform it elsewhere. Now he has come up with a new version in celebration of what will be Williams' 100th birthday on February 22. It also looks at his own career and the amazing link he has with Williams; someone he has never met. In 1975 the 13-year-old Benson wrote a story for a contest on the BBC1 children's programme Jackanory which was chosen as a winner from 15,000 entries and Williams read it on the programme. The teenager was hugely embarrassed – struggling with his sexuality he discovered how his schoolmates reacted the following day. He became an actor and is gifted with an amazing talent to conjure up voices and somehow transform his own features into those of the person he is pretending to be. As himself we get glimpses of Frankie Howerd, about whom he also wrote a play, and Stan Laurel in the first half of this funny, sad telling about two lives – his own and that of Williams whose life he has extensively researched. The tour runs until March 28 with dates in Faversham, Winchester, Henley, Stirling, Bedford, Shrewsbury, Colchester, Guildford, Gorleston, Peterborough, Exeter, ending in Weymouth. Williams was complicated, outrageous and tormented, suffering no fools, and the second half of the show shows him in full domineering flow having dinner with friends about which Barbara Windsor said – “How did you know all that? That's just what it was like having dinner with Kenny – a bloomin' nightmare.”
Cast
David Benson
