An Audience with Will Self - Review

Will's witty words of wisdom

An Audience with Will Self, Alnwick Playhouse, Wednesday, June 20.

WITTY, satirical, clever and highly entertaining are words which best describe an audience with Will Self.

In a special show at the Playhouse, the regular Evening Standard columnist presented an intimate stand-up account of his life and times and his books.

In what was a fantastically funny evening, Self, who has penned five novels and four collections of short stories, conjured up witty anecdotes, from the psychological damage of having nudist parents to his ambition to star on Desert Island Discs – if only for a minute.

In his incredibly dry, and by his own account, incredibly lugubrious manner, Self managed to rouse rapturous laughter from the audience on many an occasion.

Among his more funny accounts Self remembered how during his gap year, which he admits has somehow evolved into a gap life, he was travelling through India and found himself stuck with an Australian hippy, who, for hours on end, read Shakespeare's sonnets. Out loud! "I will never compare anybody to a summer's day after that," he comically remarked.

Self, who reminisced about how he managed to acquire the nickname Hitler while living in Brazil, also read extracts from a number of his books.

And it was here that the audience managed to sample his real talent. The sheer beauty of his writing, articulately woven together through a mix of humour, creativity and imagery, engaged the utterly transfixed audience.

Met with applause every time he finished an extract, Self demonstrated that his fictional works are hugely readable, and seemed to convert every member of the audience into fully fledged Will Self aficionados.

Self, once a newspaper cartoonist, also found time at the end of the show to answer questions from the audience, including his views on regional identity, BBC One's The Apprentice and his trials and tribulations of starring in the programme Grumpy Old Men.

Here he demonstrated that his wit knows no limits, producing spontaneous one-liners and anecdotes as well as the scripted ones throughout the show.

His appeal was summed up by The Playhouse's project manger Vincent Hope. "I think the appeal of Will Self as a showman must be the fact that he's so articulate and that his dry delivery never fails to amuse.

"His acerbic wit always cuts straight to the point. It was satisfying to see the Playhouse packed with a crowd who were so enthusiastic about his work and with others who had just came along out of pure curiosity knowing of Will from his TV appearances."

Certainly the show was entertaining, his stories absorbing, his dry wit superb.

And to leave you with some of Will Self's words of wisdom: "Never alienate an armament manufacturer ... in case they bring their work home with them." Genius!
JAMES WILLOUGHBY

(Image courtesy of Jerry Bauer)