Turn Back The Clock - Joyce Grenfell - Her Best Monologues And Songs

Turn Back the Clock gathers the best monologues and songs of Joyce Grenfell, a woman capable of creating an entire crowded room using only a change of voice, a slight adjustment of posture and the expression of someone who has just noticed George doing that again. No scenery, explosions or computer-generated dragons are required; merely formidable observation and an apparently inexhaustible supply of socially awkward people.

Grenfell specialised in the minor emergencies of respectable British life: nursery schools descending into anarchy, telephone conversations going horribly one-sided, churchgoers distracted by domestic catastrophe, hostesses fighting to maintain standards and ordinary women finding themselves trapped in situations from which good manners forbid escape. Her characters remain polite even while their worlds collapse, because civilisation depends upon carrying on until tea can be served.

Naturally, the famous nursery-school monologues are here, populated by unseen children whose behaviour must be inferred from Grenfell’s increasingly strained instructions. George is repeatedly advised not to do something never fully explained, which is probably fortunate. Hazel becomes involved with a keyhole, the classroom teeters on the edge of institutional failure and the teacher continues speaking to her visitor as though everything is perfectly normal. Anyone who has worked with small children will recognise this as documentary realism.

Elsewhere we encounter anxious ladies, enthusiastic amateurs, relentless conversationalists, complicated relatives and people for whom the smallest social obligation has developed into a personal Greek tragedy. Grenfell does not attack these characters so much as inhabit them with affectionate precision. Their pomposity, loneliness, hopefulness and confusion are all allowed to coexist, frequently within the same sentence.

The songs provide another side of her talent. Written with composers including Richard Addinsell, William Blezard and Donald Swann, they range from cheerful comic observation to moments of genuine tenderness and melancholy. A piece can begin with a funny voice and a ridiculous predicament, then quietly reveal disappointment, lost opportunity or the passing of time—before everybody becomes too uncomfortable and the entertainment politely resumes.

The title song, Turn Back the Clock, carries the collection’s strain of nostalgia, but this is not merely a museum of vanished accents, gloves and hats. Grenfell’s world may contain village fêtes, respectable drawing rooms and nursery schools apparently untroubled by safeguarding forms, yet her subject is still immediately recognisable: human beings trying to appear composed while privately making an extraordinary mess of everything.

Across nearly 240 pages, the book preserves material created for stage, radio and revue, allowing readers to enjoy the pieces as comedy or attempt them aloud. The latter may cause relatives to leave the room, particularly if the reader commits fully to the voices. Aspiring performers should note that Grenfell made these monologues appear effortless only because she possessed timing, control and a gift for characterisation, rather than because talking to an imaginary child is intrinsically hilarious.

There is a deceptive gentleness to her comedy. No one is sworn at, publicly destroyed or chased through a wall, yet pretension and foolishness are quietly punctured with surgical accuracy. Grenfell could convey an entire unhappy marriage through a pause, a social hierarchy through one vowel and a nervous breakdown through excessive brightness. Alan Bennett’s later talking heads inhabit related territory, though Grenfell arrived carrying the handbag considerably earlier.

Published by Macmillan in 1983, this is an ideal collection for admirers of classic British comedy, theatrical monologues, comic songs and language used with delicacy rather than fired from a cannon. It is also valuable to performers searching for material that requires no props beyond perhaps a chair, a hat and the courage to address several people who are not actually there.

This copy is in Good condition and is an Ex-Library Book, so it has already spent part of its life in the one institution where somebody saying “Don’t do that” remains entirely traditional. Expect the usual evidence of former library service, but the book is complete, sound and ready to entertain outside institutional custody.

From Crappy Old Books—quiet please, return by the date stamped inside, and George, don’t do that to the stock.

Keep browsing: See more Humour books Other books by Joyce Grenfell