Cybill Sheperd In Cybill Liberties
Soho Theatre, London W1, to 9 October
For the first few minutes, Cybill Shepherd's one-woman show - misleadingly described as 'stand-up comedy' - threatens to prove akin to the experience of watching your slightly pissed auntie making an exhibition of herself at a wedding. After an hour and a half, though, the sensation is - well, much the same, but somehow you can't help liking her, in spite of the occasional wince on her behalf.
Hollywood has little use for women in their mid-fifties - apart for the odd Glenn Close-type character part - so it's not hard to imagine that Shepherd's decision to take to the cabaret circuit with a kind of all-singing, all-dancing adaptation of her autobiography was prompted by the recognition that, since the best of her career is in the past, she may as well dine out on the anecdotes.
As a show, it's all over the place; she sings a number of self-penned jazz songs and although she is a more than competent singer, the lyrics take the notion of schlock to a new dimension. One song about her ex-lover Elvis moved both her and me to tears, though I suspect for different reasons. She goofs around with silly dances, flirts with young men, scatters innuendo and gulps Martini, and there is something refreshing about a film star who is not afraid to let go of her dignity and who is not still trying to look 22.
You may laugh a lot, but it isn't comedy.
