Old master Harry

Press, 24 February 1977, Page 4

Old master Harry

That the Harry Secombe | show would draw a full house I in the Town Hall auditorium: last night has been obvious for a long time. That the audi-| ence should be totally satis-] fled was perhas less of a] certainty, when you consider! the enormous difficulties of sustaining the sheer stage! energy of Secombe to the end: of long tours. Yet it all happened: Harry Secombe bouncing on to the stage about 10 o’clock, giving what had all the appearances of a performance of a lifetime, and eventually moving off after a long, standing ovation to cope with a huge queue at his dressing-room door. And, after it all, he still had the seemingly unlimited energy and good nature to put in a session of autograph-signing. Secombe’s singing programme was ideal for such an > audience: a few arias, some sentimental numbers, big hits like “This Is My Song” and i “Bless this House,” a Welsh ! song, a hymn, and an arrangement of the Milligan]' lyrics about the “little grey! hairs on my chest." Amongb these, he threw in a broad-'

[Spectrum sampling of Goon Show effects, plenty of anec- [ dotes, dozens of devastatingly i bad puns, and a hilarious variety of ludicrously Victorian 'dramatic postures. ■ It is easy to praise his singling: it is brilliantly accomplished, but also completely ! unpretentious, so that he could undercut his own songs with throw-away jokes, and laugh off some bad amplification faults which obtruded throughout the evening.

n Secombe’s humour is for- :- tunately too well known to y need description, but the - technique whereby he can n cripple an audience with the weakest of jokes came across ;- last night very much as a : - brilliant mastery of atmosy phere. His supporting artists, e Peters and Lee, seemed to try s much harder with relatively d little success, but their singi- ing obviously appealed to the d audience, and, by the standards of first-half performers, - their act was very polished indeed. —Howard McNaughton