The tempting novelty inherent to this production of Jeffery Bernard is Unwell by Keith Waterhouse, is the fact it’s staged in Soho’s Coach & Horses pub on Dean St. This iconic boozer was once a magnet for bohemian artists, day drinkers and creative ‘characters’ such as the journalist Jeffery Bernard who worked for The Spectator. Bernard’s column, popular throughout the 1970s, was titled Low Life and described by Jonathan Meades as a “suicide note in weekly instalments.”
Bernard was still alive when this play first hit the West End in 1989, and the production proved a hugely successful vehicle for Peter O’Toole in the leading role. The show returned a year later to the Old Vic, where it enjoyed a sell-out run and was filmed in front of a live audience. It’s hard to imagine a theatre production today having a similar cultural reach and impact as this play managed at the time. It continued to pull in the punters, long after Bernard had died a rather ugly death, due to his excessive drinking.
O’Toole’s success was followed by Tom Conti who starred in a revival of the play at the Garrick until 2006. The part has also been played by James Bolam, Dennis Waterman, Robert Powell, and Sir John Hurt who did a radio adaptation for Radio 4 in 2015. After four sold-out seasons, Robert Bathurst (Cold Feet, Downton Abbey) returns to the role which has already bagged a Times Critic’s Pick of the Week and a Best Actor nod at the London Pub Theatre Awards.
Adapted from the original play, which had a supporting cast of four, this hour-long one-man show is a curious window onto a period time which has long departed. The play’s concept is that Jeffery Bernard has been locked in the Coach & Horses after falling asleep in the toilets. Such mishaps DID happen in the 1970s, when lunchtime drinking, rude landlords and land lines were more common than today.
Bathurst embraces the role with gusto and works the space with impressive dexterity. Despite some awkward sight lines and a scattered audience, nobody is short changed. There does seem to be a slight problem with how the text has dated. Some of its edge may have been blunted due to its far-reaching familiarity. At the time, the script by Waterhouse was a masterclass in urbane wit and cutting satire. Understandably, some of the best jokes in this show have been already mined by dads, drag queens and theatrical drunkards over the years.
As a doyen of Soho since the ‘80s, and someone who saw the tail end of ‘old’ Soho, this show chimed with recognisable memories and experiences. Bernard laments the loss of eccentricity, crime and degeneracy which was being bleached from existence when the play was first staged. Successive generations have witnessed Soho become a safer place to visit, if increasingly soulless. Destructive hedonism is no longer lionised or even tolerated in today’s culture. This particular play is a love letter to that existence, and its charms depend on understanding that fading romance.
In 2019, Alastair Choat, the landlord at the Coach & Horses, had the idea of staging the play in the pub. The production was a poke in the eye to the freeholders, the pub chain Fuller’s, who Choat had been in dispute with for many years. He called it a “corporate takeover” which he said threatened the character of the Soho institution.
“This is a boozer…Forget the drinking, it is people coming in and talking and sharing stories and finding out what is going on and learning and meeting new people.”
Choat lost that battle and it is now a Fuller’s pub. I’m certain that they don’t sell pickled eggs behind the bar, like the Coach & Horses did in the ‘90s when yours truly was a regular. This show was an enjoyable night out and a retro flashback extraordinaire. While unlikely to chime with a younger crowd, it’s well worth a peek for those who lived pre-Internet as it’s unlikely to be staged in this way, at this venue for long.
Jeffery Bernard is Unwell is at Coach & Horses throughout March, visit Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell for further details.
Reviewer: Stewart Who?
Reviewed: 3rd March 2026
North West End UK Rating: