Attending King's Speech in Edinburgh

Last month I attended the King’s Speech…..well at least the theatre version in the King’s Theatre in Edinburgh.

Headlining as the voice coach Lionel Logue is Jason Donovan (Kylies ex and neighbours star from the 80s), clearly authentic enough in origin (being Aussie) and manner to be able to convey the brash familiarity that so irritated the court and high society of the 1930s. Raymond Coulthard played the King.

For those who have seen the excellent film The King’s Speech play, by contrast is an idealised constitutional romance of a tale, in which an ailing monarchy, with a feckless heir about to abdicate, a growing threat of Nazism in Europe, and a bullying king who has reduced his younger son to a stammering wreck, somehow rediscovers its strength and destiny through a revived connection with the people, represented by the growing, unlikely friendship between the stammering new king, George, and irreverent Australian speech therapist Lionel Logue.

Raymond Coulthard is grumpy but poignant as Bertie, Jason Donovan utterly delightful as the shabby, irrepressible Logue. An enjoyable play on a lovely evening which concluded with a walk back to my car parked at Holy corner at Morningside whilst eating fish and chips.