If the title is outrageous, so was the subject of this enjoyably anecdotal one-woman show. Chiefly remembered for playing herself in Alan Bennett’s TV film about Guy Burgess, An Englishman Abroad, Coral Browne was an immensely stylish Australian actor who conquered the West End and was noted for her waspish tongue and serial love affairs. Written by Maureen Sherlock and performed by Amanda Muggleton, the show evokes a vanished world of theatrical glamour.
This particular glittering Coral hailed from the Melbourne suburbs, arrived in London at the age of 20 and was undaunted when a mis-hearing Dame Sybil Thorndike told her: “Go home Carol!” She persevered and graduated from Shaftesbury Avenue froth to Goneril, Gertrude and Lady Macbeth at the Old Vic. Her film career encompassed everything from the role of a Nazi spy in a George Formby comedy to that of an electrocuted drama critic in Theatre of Blood.
She was celebrated for her wit. When a giant phallus was unveiled at the climax of Peter Brook’s production of Oedipus, it was Browne who turned to her male companion – in this version, Alec Guinness – and inquired: “Is it anyone we know, dear?”
Barry Humphries called her “magnificently Melbourne” and it would be fascinating to know why the Victorian city has produced so many buoyant eccentrics, including Humphries himself and Germaine Greer. But, although the show doesn’t indulge in social speculation and Muggleton is often engaged in a dialogue with the prompter, we get an entertaining portrait of a singular star who, when dressed in scarlet by Cecil Beaton (an ex-lover) in an Oscar Wilde play, angrily protested “I look like a fire hydrant.”
At the King’s Head theatre, London, until 3 June.
