Just Jim Dale
Opening Night: June 3, 2014
Closing: August 10, 2014
Theater: Laura Pels Theatre
Tony Award® winner, two-time Grammy Award® winner and two-time Academy Award® nominee Jim Dale (Roundabout’s The Road to Mecca,The Threepenny Opera) returns to the Roundabout stage to star in his brand new solo show! Directed by Tony winner Richard Maltby, Jr. (Fosse, Ain’t Misbehavin’), Just Jim Dale is a hilarious and heartwarming tour-de-force performance from one of the most masterful entertainers of his generation.
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June 3, 2014
Presumably, anyone venturing to Roundabout Theatre Company’s Laura Pels Theatre to see Just Jim Dale is in the market for an evening of Jim Dale, the whole Jim Dale, and nothing but Jim Dale. Luckily, Jim Dale — who saves all his hyperbole for the show itself — is not one to disappoint. An interest in the life and career of the man stage left, right, and center, is a certainly a helpful prerequisite for audiences hoping to enjoy his stroll down memory lane. Yet, even for those unfamiliar with Dale’s diverse theatrical tenure will be hard-pressed not to indulge in the old-fashioned entertainer’s winning British charm. The Laura Pels provides an unconventional environment for a show that feels better suited for a weekend engagement at a cabaret club than a two-month run in a full-size proscenium theater. Luckily, Dale’s radiant joy for being onstage warms the expansive room as if we were all gathered around his living room fireplace rather than staring at a bare stage with a simple backdrop and piano (set design by Anna Louizos). The piano is occupied by talented accompanist Mark York, who offers Dale some company while enjoying the show himself with an infectious glee that adds to the cheerful, relaxed mood emanating throughout the theater.
READ THE REVIEWJune 3, 2014
Whether he’s tripping over an imaginary curtain or reimagining a pas de deux ballet routine he performed as a boy sans partner, Jim Dale proves to be remarkably spry for 78. In Just Jim Dale, a glorified cabaret act playing through Aug. 10 at Roundabout’s Off Broadway Laura Pels Theatre, the British-born actor recounts his noteworthy career in song, anecdote, and groan-inducing music-hall joke. (Mark York accompanies him on piano.) Dale has a rich life to draw upon. As a teenager, he left a job at a shoe factory (”I put down my knife, picked up my confidence, and I walked out”) and joined the music-hall circuit as a young performer, doing 14 shows per week, 50 weeks per year. He had a brief stint as a teen pop idol (though he might have spared us a full rendition of his bizarrely titled self-penned hit, ”Dick-a-Dum-Dum (King’s Road)”) and cowrote the Oscar-nominated theme to the 1966 film Georgy Girl. Before long, he embarked on a career in theater that would earn him a Tony Award for the 1980 musical Barnum.
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June 3, 2014
The audiences at Just Jim Dale may be turning out to see the chap who gave voice to hundreds of characters as narrator of the entire series of Harry Potter audio books. But they leave the theater humming “Georgy Girl,” the infectious film song that won the British star an Oscar nomination. In the interim, they are royally wooed, pursued, beguiled, enchanted and thoroughly captivated by this actor / singer/ dancer /acrobat / music-hall comic / voice artist / lyricist and raconteur — a one-man band who lives only to make you laugh. Who wound this guy up? One unmistakable clue is the unit set for this solo party piece. Anna Louizos’ nostalgic design presents a photographic view of an old-time English Music Hall, its faded glory caught and framed by the gaudy flashing lights of a cheesy proscenium arch. That evocative image imprints itself, becoming both theme and motif for this charming show.
READ THE REVIEWJune 3, 2014
You can take the boy out of the English music hall but you can’t take the English music hall out of the boy. Jolly good thing for that, too. That’s the takeaway of the light and breezy Just Jim Dale, a memoir about the actor’s remarkable 60-year-career that spans stage, pop and Harry Potter audio books — yep, he’s the voice behind Dobby and company. Written and performed by Dale, with piano accompaniment by Mark York and direction for the Roundabout by Richard Maltby, Jr., the show boasts chipper music, buckets of charm and a pair of rubbery two-story legs that go every which way and loose. Those long, pratfall-prone limbs hold up Dale, who grew up in small-town England with the surname Smith and got his showbiz break when he tripped at an audition and cracked up the producer.
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June 4, 2014
In his light-footed and lovable new solo show, Just Jim Dale, the man of the hour and a half recalls an early turning point in his path toward a long career in show business. When the young Mr. Dale was taken to his first West End musical, Me and My Girl, he watched a comic dazzle the audience with a tumble into the orchestra pit and felt a sudden, churning yearning to be up there, basking in the laughter. He turned to his father and asked how he might make a go of it. The answer: “Learn how to move.” Mr. Dale clearly took the advice to heart. Like a shot, he was off to ballet class, although he was not destined to become the British Baryshnikov. He did, however, soon master the art of the pratfall. He would also acquire an ability to swivel his hips and strum a guitar, Elvis-style, and learn to deliver a song while walking a tightrope, and perform Molière while hopping around on the backs of auditorium seats.
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