Can it be true? The programme tells us that Jim Dale is about to turn 80. You would hardly guess it watching this lithe figure as he recalls an extraordinary career that has embraced Carry On movies, Olivier’s National Theatre company and Broadway stardom in Barnum and Me and My Girl. Far from being an old man’s nostalgia trip, the show feels like an expression of Dale’s perpetual youth.
Two things clearly shaped his talent: a love of music hall and attendance at dance classes. They come together in his re-creation of a teenage dance competition where his cousin failed to turn up and he was forced to do a pas de deux with an imaginary partner: the sight of the presumed partner sailing into the stratosphere had me weeping with laughter and reminded me how music-hall artists like Max Wall and Billy Dainty made dance a vital part of their act. Dale’s gift for acrobatic comedy was also the secret of his success in the Carry On films, in which he did his own stunts and was always falling off camels and hurtling down hospital corridors on runaway trolleys.
Working the halls, as Dale did for a couple of teenage years as part of Carroll Levis Discoveries, is also ideal training for a future actor. Specifically, Dale claims it was seeing Coward’s Fumed Oak that inspired him and he re-creates the final speech from that play, where a suburban worm turns on his family, with the right sour asperity.
In many ways, it’s an odd choice, since Dale’s great gift has always been for getting on easy terms with an audience. Encouraged by Frank Dunlop at the Young Vic, he played a whole succession of Shakespearean clowns including Bottom, Autolycus and the dismally unfunny Lancelot Gobbo before moving on to Molière’s Scapino and the plays of Peter Nichols. His performance of the opening scene from Nichols’s Joe Egg, in which a harassed teacher treats the audience as if they were unruly pupils, makes me envious of the New York audiences who got to see the whole thing. The unfairly talented Dale, accompanied by Mark York on piano, also sings a number of songs from Broadway shows as well as the hit number he co-wrote for the movie Georgy Girl.
But what finally strikes you is his physical exuberance. Fifty years ago, as a boy-critic, I reviewed him in a cod-melodrama called The Wayward Way at this very theatre and singled out the “Nureyev-like leap” with which he rescued the beleaguered heroine. Today, Dale still represents the delight of comedy in motion.
• At Vaudeville, London, until 20 June. Buy tickets from theguardianboxoffice.com or call 0330 333 6906.
