![]() It’s all very late 1950s as is the refrain from ‘The Gas-man Cometh’ with its series of mishaps ‘it’s all work for the British workman’ and then we’re in darker territory. We start with a paean to the omnibus, in A Transport of Delight with its delicious cascading scale denoting falling down the stairs. But he includes several lesser-known in favour of the obvious like ‘The Rhinoceros Song’ with its ‘Mud, mud glorious mud’ since there’s bestiary enough here.įlanders is very tongue-in-cheek in his first LP intro: ‘The purpose of satire, it has been rightly said, is to strip off the veneer of comforting illusion and cosy half-truth - and our job, as I see it, is to put it back again.’ Don’t believe it. Only one famous song ‘Have Some Madeira M’dear’ quite edgy but really dissonant to us now, has been banished by Bednarczyk – and 20 years before #Me Too. Anti-apartheid songs loom twice here, and one on nuclear holocaust. Seemingly comfortable entertainers, poking gentle British fun at themselves and Britain, the pair were in fact deeply subversive of the status quo. And the rest – Bednarczyk’s excellent at interspersing a few details, though not too many. Though Flanders and Swann knew each other from 1938 at Westminster School, and wrote music for other acts including Joyce Grenfell, and shows like Airs on a Shoestring, it was on New Year’s Eve 1956 they finally tried out a show of their own at Lindsey Theatre Notting Hill. It’s not as deep naturally though even perhaps clearer. He manages this by being simply himself, someone whose own aesthetic and athletic wit – the linking commentaries show that – prove an affinity within which Bednarczyk inhabits his voice close to Flanders’ own. Both Flanders and Swann, singing and accompanying himself with his sweet-toned Kawai piano.īednarczyk’s voice is his own – he’s famed for many shows – but he recreates the flavour, the timbre and wit of the duo like no-one else I’ve heard. Early on in July 1997, Stefan Bednarczyk arrived with An Evening With Flanders and Swann, commissioned by the widows of both musicians. Reviewįootprints Festival celebrates many of the great performances at Jermyn Street over its 27-year history. Camera work from several angles (Director Mark Swadel, Operator Balazs Weidner), including seventy-five degrees overhead, are deftly sequenced. Arranged and performed by Stefan Bednarczyk. ![]()
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