ELIZABETH Mansfield knows this tribute show like the back of her gloved hand.
She and partner Steve Trafford, writer and co-director, first produced this biographical drama of the queen of the music halls in 1987, aptly at the last bastion of such entertainment, Leeds City Varieties.
The West End and an Olivier award nomination ensued and so too did a new version in 2000, and now Miss Mansfield is re-re-discovering Marie once more with pianist Stephen Rose by her side.
The script and even the Sheila Godbolt costumes come alive again from the West End production, and while one of British theatre’s best solo performers may be putting on old clothes once more, Marie is as fresh, informative, nostalgic, humorous, sad, ghostly, warm and wonderful and full of life and pathos, song and golden history, as it ever was.
The new ingredient is that Miss Mansfield is now much closer in age to the character she plays, as Marie Lloyd looks back on a career behind the spotlights and in the headlines from the closing chapter backwards, nursing a decanter to emptiness in her dressing room.
The Mansfield eyes still sparkle, but they are inevitably lined too and the powders of parts past inform her gilded performance, making it all the more moving.
Outspoken, outrageous, Marie Lloyd is still out there thanks to this fabulous revival.
* Marie – The Story Of Marie Lloyd, Elizabeth Mansfield, The Studio, York Theatre Royal, today; then on tour until November 26. York box office: 01904 623568.
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