Like its subject, this playful, exuberant theatrical happening wins you over with sheer heart and good humour. Staffordshire’s Neil ‘Nello’ Baldwin, now 76, was diagnosed with learning difficulties – “they didn’t call it that back then” – aged four. He didn’t let that stop him becoming a circus clown, a kit-man for Stoke City FC, a fixture at Keele University, a minor celebrity and a fearless autograph hunter who numbers Harold Wilson, Kevin Keegan and our new king among his conquests.
He’s already been immortalised in a book and a TV film starring Toby Jones, and now he storms the West End’s newest theatre in the protean shape of Michael Hugo, to disrupt and disarm the other actors assembling a stage-collage of his life. Director Theresa Heskins has assembled a neurodiverse troupe, all of whom play versions of Neil – under the beady gaze of Hugo’s “Real Neil” – and countless figures from his life. One actor fell ill yesterday and two understudies stepped seamlessly in. Talk about triumph over adversity, and life imitating art.
The script – by Baldwin, his friend Malcolm Clarke, and Heskins – is wilfully scrappy. The determination to celebrate Neil’s sunniness and his ability to charm people means the bullying and exploitation he also suffered is downplayed. The accents, the in-jokes and the reverent introduction of historic Stoke players will have had greater resonance at the New Vic Theatre in Baldwin’s hometown, Newcastle-under-Lyme, where this production was created.
Still, my reservations were steadily and sweetly dismantled. Much of this is down to Hugo, whose impeccable timing is matched by his rubbery physicality, and Suzanne Ahmet, heartwarming and heartbreaking as Neil’s mum, Mary. Around them, Heskins constructs a larky narrative that shifts back and forth in time and works on several ‘meta’ levels.
Hugo’s “Real Neil” directs and edits the action as it’s going on, skipping bits and reworking others, asking the audience if he should “get a move on”. A self-important actor (Gareth Cassidy) is relegated to doing overblown accents and impersonations: another (Charlie Bence) keeps trying to introduce a portentous spoken-word poem. There are custard pies and a panto cookery scene. Famous footballers morph into taxi drivers and archbishops. Neil’s self-belief means he thinks he could be England manager, or prime minister. “There’s still time,” Hugo deadpans to the audience.
Props pop up, Mary Poppins-like, through Neil’s ever-present bag-for-life, the audience surrounding an almost bare stage. How bold to open this spanking new venue with something so rough, anarchic and celebratory, rather than a star vehicle or a classic. The show’s ending, dealing with Neil’s late-life quasi-fame, is rushed and jumbled but it ends with his philosophy: work hard, make others happy, be happy yourself. Not a bad code to live by.
As for @sohoplace (still a terrible name), the auditorium is pristine and lovely, the building clearly user-friendly and porous in the way older theatres and converted spaces are not, but commensurately lacking in charm. Currently the public spaces resemble a cruise ship or a casino. But interesting things are planned here: Josie Rourke’s production of As You Like It, and Medea with Sophie Okonedo. Let’s see what it’s like when a few more acting companies have roughed up its edges.
