Dominic Goodwin’s struggling variety act Freddie “Mine’s A Half” Francis in Twice Nightly
DOMINIC Goodwin is a man of many arts parts.
Actor, playing everything from Hercule Poirot to Siegfried Sassoon, Wind In The Willows’ Toad to Frankenstein’s Monster. Director. Georgian Little Theatre pantomime dame. Former theatre manager. The Dr Watson half of a Holmes & Watson double act from 2009 to 2024. Tales at Tiffin storyteller. Banks Music Publications director. Mimic. Bon vivant. You are always onto a good thing with Goodwin.
A figure of mirth as much as girth, forever larger than life, with a waistcoat to match, he has added another string to his bow in his debut solo comedy show cum fading memory play, Twice Nightly: a nostalgic trip through the golden days of variety and its dying embers, written and performed by the Scottish-born Ryedale polymath.
The year is 1956, Johnnie “Prince of Wails” Ray’s Just Walking In The Rain is reigning everywhere, Elvis and TV sets are on the rise, clouding the future for the likes of Goodwin’s Freddie “Mine’s A Half” Francis as he struggles with drink and bookings alike, unstable on his feet but ever willing and still able to raise a titter, mild, not bitter.
Tipsy and ever closer to tipping over the edge after 30 years as a second-spot act, we join Freddie on stage, glass of sustenance on a table to his side, and in his dressing room, with a hat stand and partition screen behind to facilitate multiple costume and character changes (in costumes by Pam Broadbent).
Freddie will be as much avuncular narrator as enervated performer, interweaving his own story with routines by the greats of variety in a series of quickfire transformations.
All are pulled off with uncanny mimicry, from Max Miller to Jimmy James and “Monsewer” Eddie Gray (not the Revie-era Leeds United footballer); from the Act Two-opening Norman “Over The Garden Wall” Evans’s gossiping housewife to Robb Wilton’s woeful wartime worries, many performed with the backing of the late performers’families.
Freddie’s own material never matches those heights, but we warm to his recollections of a life spent touring the halls: “the ups, the downs, the riotous, the fantastic and the downright silly,” as Goodwin put it in his CharlesHutchPress interview.
Dominic Goodwin in the guise of Norman Evans’s Over The Garden Wall caricature of a gossiping housewife in Twice Nightly
We learn of Freddie’s days entertaining the troops during the Second World War, surviving the jibes of the intimidating Glasgow Empire crowd, and what really happened when a speciality act lost her snake on stage.
We learn too of the personal price he must pay for “doing what he just had to do”: the trudge of all those nights away, the solace of empty bottles, to the cost of his marriage, providing the show’s pathos to counter all that patter and natter.
Directed by the experienced hand of York actor-director Thomas Frere, Goodwin’s performance is the apotheosis of his many talents, even stretching to baritone singing for The Man Who Broke The Bank At Monte Carlo, Happy Days Are Here Again, Goodnight Sweetheart and an out-of-season White Christmas.
In the vein of such solitary rueful ruminations as Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape, Heathcote Williams’s Hancock’s Last Half Four and Philip Meeks’s desolate veteran pantomime dame in Twinkle, Little Star, life’s fading fires and thwarted pathways in Twice Nightly make for a brightly burning star vehicle for Dominic Goodwin.
Dominic Goodwin’s 22-date tour of Twice Nightly began on May 21, climaxing with this week’s five-night run at The Lantern Theatre, Brighton (July 21 to 25).
Twice Nightly will play Terrington Village Hall, near York, on March 12 2027, 8pm. Box office: ticketsource.com; email terringtonvillagehallinfo@gmail.com or phone Dave on 01653 648394.
Did you know?
THE wall for Dominic Goodwin’s Norman “Over The Garden Wall” Evans routine was built in Dominic’s home village of Moniaive in south west Scotland by Angus McIver, whose wife, Carole, searched for the correct colour paints to design it.
Did you know too?
DOMINIC Goodwin uses Frankie Vaughan’s make-up box, donated to Henley on Thames Kensington Theatre, when applying the colours Number 5 and 9 in a dressing-room scene.