‘Just Jim Dale,’ theater review

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.