Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
Cast: Mark Gatiss, Reece Shearsmith, Steve Pemberton, Monica Dolan, Goldie Crane.
The strangest of encounters often make for the finest stories to be told, the random, the most unexpected, the implausibly surprising, these intersecting stumbling’s into another’s orbit are to be cherished by all as they prove a truth of life, that those we meet in a one off moment in time have been placed before us to perhaps make an amends elsewhere in our lives; this truth is expanded when it comes to those we perceive as an idol, a hero maybe, someone to whom we look to as a star in our eyes and who we know so much about, but who might only be in our lives for less than a day.
As part of Bradford’s City of Culture year, Jeremy Dyson has penned the seemingly implausible but inspired by a true story account of one ordinary man’s conversation with the actor James Mason as he returns to his native Yorkshire to do a series of interviews ahead of his latest project.
High Cockalorum is a comedy of pathos, and it is made perfect by the sheer beauty of having The League of Gentlemen team prised together in one sweet movement of touching drama where James Mason, a master architect of performance which, as the play insists through the insight of Marty, lays the foundations for the use of Bond villains across time as his role of Phillip Vandamm in the timeless classic North By Northwest captures so much of the suave introspection of anti-heroic behaviour that in another time the man himself could have been the first choice to play Blofeld.
It is so rare a situation that thrusts two people together that it can seem to some that the absurdity of the accidental encounter is at the least an embellishment, an exaggeration of a man’s wish fulfilment, an adornment to entrance and captivate an audience down the local on a Saturday night, but it is to the credit of Jeremy Dyson that the story comes across as completely factual, not just inspired, but outrageously convincing and demonstrative of his powers as a story-teller.
With Mark Gatiss offering a tremendous talent for performing the voice of Jason Mason right down to the exposed vulnerability that the actor was able to suppress with sheer confidence in characters that he held with incredible responsibility, the power of the play resounds to the listener with a sense of adoration and respect.
High Cockalorum is high class writing, it is pathos wrapped in tragedy and yet underneath it holds together a sincerity of human emotion that is undeniable and holds at its very centre, the minute feelings of joy that make every life worth living. A genuine piece of writing that is magical to hear.
Ian D. Hall