'A neurotic attempt to assess Liberace's legacy': PATRICK MARMION reviews Sir Simon Russell Beale in I'll Be Seeing You

I’ll Be Seeing You (Festival Theatre, Pitlochry)Rating:What is more extraordinary: the esteemed and subtle classical actor Sir Simon Russell Beale playing the great and flashy Las Vegas piano-playing showman Liberace?Or the fact that Russell Beale (SRB to his admirers) is back on stage after pulling out of a Royal Shakespeare Company production of Titus Andronicus after a shock diagnosis of colon cancer just 12 months ago?All things considered, the 65-year-old looks hale and even hearty. The same, alas, cannot be said of the creaky new play in which he finds himself entombed.The latest work from Martin Sherman – author of the revered 1979 play, Bent (about two gay men in Nazi Germany) – is a neurotic attempt to assess Liberace's legacy.At his peak, in the 1950s-1970s, 'Mr Showmanship', as he was dubbed, was the world's highest paid entertainer. 'A neurotic attempt to assess Liberace's legacy': PATRICK MARMION reviews Sir Simon Russell Beale in I'll Be Seeing You It's great to see SRB back in action. Ennobled by the queen in 2019, his status as a junior national treasure remains intactFamous for his flamboyant piano playing (not to mention the candelabra perched on top of his rhinestone-encrusted grand), Liberace was equally notorious for denying his homosexuality right up to his death in 1987, having become HIV positive two years earlier.Here, Sherman has SRB – an astonishing Liberace lookalike – make multiple entrances into the garret home of a furious young gay writer (Fra Fee), who has been commissioned to write a play about him.Although the Pitlochry show lacks Liberace's Las Vegas budget, we see him first flown in on a Peter Pan wire, enrobed in a floor-length gown of white feathers, with sparkling jewellery beneath an Elvis wig and sideburns.A later entrance stretches to a hilarious 2D mock-up of Liberace's glitter-encrusted Phantom V Rolls Royce, driven by his live-in chauffeur (and boyfriend) Scott Thorson (Ali Watt).Directed by Pitlochry's own tirelessly charismatic showman and Artistic Director Alan Cumming, alongside Ben Occhipinti, the surreal play is meant to highlight the generational conflict between gay men.On the one hand, we have the old guard: compelled to deny their sexuality to stay in business and out of jail. On the other, the younger generation, embodied by Fee's writer: a ripped, hairless, tattooed, drug-fuelled sex junkie.And, appearing as himself, 87-year-old Sherman comes on at the end to rue having missed out on such dissolution. He is consoled by Liberace, who spoon feeds him chocolate and vanilla ice-cream, and sings his trademark finale I'll Be Seeing You.SRB is of course fabulous in a succession of outrageous outfits – with a more modest sky-blue suit, pink shirt and giant gold belt worn in between. Although the Pitlochry show lacks Liberace's Las Vegas budget, we see him first flown in on a Peter Pan wire, enrobed in a floor length gown of white feathers, with sparkling jewellery beneath an Elvis wig and sideburns A later entrance stretches to a hilarious 2D mock-up of Liberace's glitter-encrusted Phantom V Rolls Royce, driven by his live-in chauffeur (and boyfriend) Scott Thorson (Ali Watt)When Fee's writer fumes about Liberace letting the side down by suing the Daily Mirror in 1959 for daring to insinuate that he might be homosexual, the great showman simply flounces off for a costume change.There's sub-Wildean wit when Fee's writer cries: 'You lied spectacularly,' to cue up Liberace's triumphant smirk: 'I do [itals] everything [end itals] spectacularly!'And there is a very good joke in which Liberace's Polish mother (an amusingly monstrous Anne Lacey) says the only reason her son didn't carry on living with her was because she didn't have a driver's licence.But there is also crass vulgarity, including a scene when Fee pleasures himself at the back of the stage, while Liberace croons The Most Beautiful Girl In The World to his mum.You have to wonder, too, about the way Fee's character is used as a ripped sex-object for SRB to fondle (and the audience to ogle). But it's typical of a show that is at once salacious and censorious, simultaneously adoring and condemning the legend.Yet there is no real conflict in the Liberace-versus-writer face-off. Instead, it's a peculiar collision between sentimentality and anger, burlesque and seriousness.Still, it's great to see SRB back in action. Ennobled by the Queen in 2019, his status as a junior national treasure remains intact.