More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
27 August
* A quick sketch, whose detail is being filled in *
We couldn't see the said Y-fronts*, but could conceive not only, from his style of dress as a class club act gone wrong, that Wilfredo was wearing them, but also that, as with his shirt, they would be held closed (ouch!) with a safety-pin.
With his trousers elevated to below his ribs, Wilfredo cut a figure reminiscent, including the teeth, of when down-and-out Reggie Perrin, in the first series of his Fall and Rise and having faked his suicide, ends up having to muck out the pigs in the character of Mr Potts**. And, indeed, Wilfredo is another such creation as Reginald Iolanthe Perrin, whose ways and manners become - and let him embody - his role.
I do not think the comparison with the great Leonard Rossiter, or, indeed, with the equally great Ronnie Barker, unjust: to make a Rigsby, an Arkwright or a Fletcher - or even a Dame Edna - necessitates having a feel for what that person would do in any situation, and one sensed that quality in Wilfredo and how he lived, moved and breathed.
This had been Wilfredo's last show in his run at the Edinburgh Fringe, downstairs in The Tron (pub), and there was great warmth from those in the audience - and also, amongst the women, probably a fear of either some not exactly passing slight, or of some equally unwelcome favourable attention, from Wilfredo.
This was a very convinced embodiment of a Spanish celebrity singer, whose humour lies in having more faith in his love-making and his talent than one felt could really be justified (the boasting of Cellini in his autobiography, or the ambition of an Alan Partridge to be more than he is? - except that Wilfredo, somehow, has none of the doubts or mishaps, and so is more like Cellini).
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
27 August
* A quick sketch, whose detail is being filled in *
We couldn't see the said Y-fronts*, but could conceive not only, from his style of dress as a class club act gone wrong, that Wilfredo was wearing them, but also that, as with his shirt, they would be held closed (ouch!) with a safety-pin.
With his trousers elevated to below his ribs, Wilfredo cut a figure reminiscent, including the teeth, of when down-and-out Reggie Perrin, in the first series of his Fall and Rise and having faked his suicide, ends up having to muck out the pigs in the character of Mr Potts**. And, indeed, Wilfredo is another such creation as Reginald Iolanthe Perrin, whose ways and manners become - and let him embody - his role.
I do not think the comparison with the great Leonard Rossiter, or, indeed, with the equally great Ronnie Barker, unjust: to make a Rigsby, an Arkwright or a Fletcher - or even a Dame Edna - necessitates having a feel for what that person would do in any situation, and one sensed that quality in Wilfredo and how he lived, moved and breathed.
This had been Wilfredo's last show in his run at the Edinburgh Fringe, downstairs in The Tron (pub), and there was great warmth from those in the audience - and also, amongst the women, probably a fear of either some not exactly passing slight, or of some equally unwelcome favourable attention, from Wilfredo.
This was a very convinced embodiment of a Spanish celebrity singer, whose humour lies in having more faith in his love-making and his talent than one felt could really be justified (the boasting of Cellini in his autobiography, or the ambition of an Alan Partridge to be more than he is? - except that Wilfredo, somehow, has none of the doubts or mishaps, and so is more like Cellini).
Wilfredo's petulance as a performer is delightful, provoking the laughter that he resents, and which he insists requires him to start again, in his recitations (is one reminded of Frankie Howerd?). Likewise, his lechery, both somehow suggested, and made unlikely to achieve its aim, by his peculiar smile is very real - will he jump off the stage into a woman's surprised lap? (Fortunately, he confined himself to throwing individual red roses to the ladies.)
With a little more development of material, Wilfredo could go on to greater things embodied by the likes of Sir Les, but he needs, perhaps, to be a little less downright strange: When I first saw you / I dropped my pasty may be some recondite sexual reference, but, although the stark incongruity was funny - because, precisely, it evokes the shabbiness by which Wilfredo's appearance belies his grotesque self-belief - it maybe did not fit well with the rest of the ditty about Harriet Harman.
Yes, Rt Hon. Harriet Harman MP, but I shan't say more - you'll have to see the act! (Or you could read another reviewer's account.)
End-notes
* By Tweet to @TheAgent Apsley, Wilfredo has declared that he 'goes commando', and that Y-fronts are never his thing.
** Strangely, an official Perrin web-site, which purports to give a synopsis of every episode, does not even mention the pig-farm.
