“Television is the survival of the glibbest,” says Roy Ward early in the play; and he goes on to prove the worth of theatre as the antithesis of glib.  

Resident Alien, by Tim Fountain, is set in Quentin Crisp’s New York apartment in 1999. It consists of gleanings from Crisp’s writings; many from his later years, as he scratched a subsistence existence in NYC, a voluntary exile from his native England, in a city where he felt more at home. 

While discussing the piece with a colleague during the short interval, I declare I would be terrified of doing such a solo performance, that it is the collaborative aspect of theatre I love most. However, Mr Ward shows us is that collaboration is indeed what he does, as he finesses himself into a relationship with us, the audience.

He does so by subtly bringing us to him, by charming us into collaborating with him. He sits, alone on his bed, as we enter, and slowly begins to talk, at first almost to himself, then to us. His physicality is subtle and his engagement with us is undemanding and charming. 

It is an object lesson in solo performance and a welcome antidote to the kind of performer who would come on like a kleig-light and force your engagement. It is wonderful to see actors of maturity, experience and talent do their work; and a shame that we seldom get to see them do so.

The writing is likewise low-key, but gives us a good glimpse into a man who has lived all his life as an outsider, a homosexual, or perhaps, as he says, “a trans-something” in an era when that was illegal and life was conducted in an ambience of dark corners and small rooms.

By the time we see him, Crisp is famous but shunning celebrity, well aware of mortality, and eking out his days with a sprightly wit and meagre meals.

A charming, funny and melancholy 90 minutes.

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The poetic cynic Quentin Crisp was wonderfully quotable – a latter-day Oscar Wilde, made of more stoic, less squashable stuff. 

This one-queen show is a loosely plotted grab-bag of the flaneur’s amusing “mail order guru” aphorisms: “Sex smudges your make-up,” he says, and “Books are for writing, not for reading.”

Roy Ward, as the Englishman in New York in 1999, purses lips, flutters hands, bats mascara’d eyelashes and keeps his knees together beautifully. [More]

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Having everyone packed tightly into the cozy confines of the Basement Studio creates a level of intimacy that serves the unfolding monologue well.  A slightly built, grey haired, old man sits on a rickety single bed in his dressing gown, watching television. 

Huffily switching off the daytime chat show he’s been watching, the elderly, eminent Quentin Crisp addresses us without irony or resentment, as though having fifty odd people in his modest, shabby New York bedsit is as normal as Oprah on the telly.  He’ll soon be dolling himself up for an arranged meeting with a couple of British chaps keen to interview him for their website, but for now he has time to idly regale us with opinions and anecdotes that may surprise, delight or shock as we see fit. 

Roy Ward bestows a softly intense, phlegmatically flamboyant portrait of a 90-year-old Quentin, presumably self-directed given the absence of a director credit.  How very Quentin Crisp!  Never one to be told what to do, by anybody. 

The details of Jessika Verryt’s cluttered, remarkably unspectacular set and the tastefully ostentatious costume choices of Hanna Randall also seem to be essentially dictated by the mores of the contrary old poof himself. 

As flagrantly mercurial as he is unapologetically frank, Ward’s Quentin conveys a kind of contempt for humanity in the same breath as expressing gratitude and almost wondrous delight toward the same species. Politics is at best a form of escapist amusement, at worst a soul-consuming waste of time.  Marriage is death.  Music is insufferable noise pollution.  It is to laugh [as Johnny Carson was wont to say]. 

Playwright Tim Fountain describes his subject as a “great, glittering contradiction”, and his script, presumably by-and-large an editing of Crisp’s own words, certainly strives to uphold this claim. We feel privileged to be regaled effortlessly, perhaps compulsively, with his world-famous anecdotal commentary, within his determinedly dusty, uncompromisingly personal space.

He can recall number of people telling him what he’s ‘supposed’ to think, but anyone who really knows him knows that only one thing really matters in this life, and that’s Style.  Without compromise.  Oscar Wilde says style is more important than sincerity; Quentin Crisp says they are the same thing. He doesn’t care whether we like him or not, so long as we’re impressed with his style. 

One wonders what the Englishman-in-New-York himself would have thought of Fountain’s treatment of him; having died the same month as it was first performed in 1999 I daresay he didn’t get the chance.  But however on-the-money the script and Ward’s engaging portrayal is and/or isn’t, this inside-outsider’s guide to style is a highly enjoyable, more sweet than bitter, lo-fi celebration of a truly original character.

[I reviewed a previous production of Resident Alien in 2008.  Further thoughts on Fountain’s play and the man himself can be read here.]

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We enjoyed a lovely warm theatrical experience tonight – a charming, threadbare, Thatcher-ite, and acerbic view of the world from the portrayal of an old queen with no will or wit to be ordinary or dated.

It was a delight to see this multi-award winning one-hander being performed impeccably by Roy Ward in The Basement’s intimate upstairs studio space. Having previously seen Ward in the Auckland Theatre Company’s Crucible almost six years ago, witnessing his debut solo performance was nothing short of a treat. He basically embodied Quentin Crisp and all of the traits of the infamous 90-year-old ‘Professor of Style’. [More]

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