|
Brenda Blethyn on playing a club comic
Comedians always get a raw deal when portrayed in fiction, with that tragic tears-of-a-clown image proving just too irresistible to dramatists.
The latest addition to the list is Jean Dwight, a canteen worker by day, aging star of the fading cabaret circuit by night – and even though she's not all that miserable by screen standards, she is still something of a monster.
This housewife would-be superstar the focus of the new film Clubland, which is about the crisis she suffers when the son she abandoned her promising career to bring up starts living his own life out of her dominant shadow. That sense of loss, plus the dawning realisation she will never be a star, brings out the manipulative, bullying worst in her.
© Chortle
