What a Gay Day – the Larry Grayson story by Tim Connery. The Brockley Jack Studio, Brockley road, London SE4 until 30 August 2025, 5☆☆☆☆☆. Review: William Russell.

Photo Credit: Bridge House Theatre.

What a Gay Day – the Larry Grayson story by Tim Connery. The Brockley Jack Studio,   Brockley road, London SE4 until 30 August 2025,

5☆☆☆☆☆. Review: William Russell.

“Funniest show in town.”

This Bridge House Penge theatre production directed by Alex has transferred to the Jack Studio for a well deserved if far too short run and proves to be quite the best night out possible – it tells one things one did not know about the man who became Larry Grayson, the campest television host of all time, and Luke Adamson, who plays him, brings a complicated man brilliantly to life. Grayson was famous for his catch phrases like Shut That Door and a host of characters he claimed to know like Everard and Slack Alice, the window cleaner Peek-a-bo Pete and the postman Pop-it-in- Pete as well as for his stints as host of The Generation Game. One has to be of a certain age to remember him but Adamson manages to make Grayson's routines as funny now as they were then – and has the ability to improvise. When one punter had to nip out mid spiel for reasons of comfort he directed a basilisk stare in his direction and then announced – Shut That Door. It takes a performer of skill to do that.

Born in 1923 to Ethel White he was fostered as a baby to a family in Nuneaton and brought up believing she was his aunt. He became a comedian as Billy Breen and spent some 20 years touring working men's clubs until he acquired a London agent, changed his name to Larry Grayson and became a star playing the Palladium, at Danny La Rue's club when Danny was on holiday, and ultimately as the host of the Generation Game. He never admitted to being gay and was subject to attacks by the Gay Liberation Front for how he performed. Actually he belonged to a long tradition of camp performers for whom British audiences have a particular fondness. He relished his success, bought a Rolls Royce, and a bigger house in Nuneaton and fell foul of the BBC when eventually he decided he had done it long enough – it was their top selling show of the day, Tim Connery has managed to place the facts of his life into the sort of rambling performance Grayson would give with skill so that while you laugh you learn particularly about the fellow school boy killed during the war who was the love of his life. He is not quite forgotten today but only half remembered.His Generation Game partnership with Isla Sinclair was one of television's perfect double acts, she providing the stability he did not. Grayson could never resist wandering off to another topic, and spectacles on a cord round the neck were devised it seems because it explained why in one shot he was wearing glasses, in another he was not. Where had they got to.

Cast

Luke Adamson

Creatives

Director – Tim Connery