Hancock's Last Half Hour by Heathcote Williams

Pip Utton is probably best known for Adolf, his intense monodrama in which audiences are brought face to face with the most reviled figure of the twentieth century. With Hancock's Last Half Hour, he returns to the Fringe as another unpleasant fascist, albeit one who brought much happiness and laughter to the world.

A sociopathic wife-beater he may have been, but good timing will get you far in the entertainment business. With unsurpassable scriptwriters Ray Galton and Alan Simpson behind him, not to mention a stable of top comic talent to bounce off, Tony Hancock's timing assured his status as a beloved British icon. That the man's obvious faults remain a point of such gruesome interest for fans almost 50 years after his suicide is due to the disparity between his private life and the persona that millions grew to love on TV and radio.

To watch Utton enact the sad clown's final moments, drinking from the bottle alone in a Sydney hotel room, is heartwrenching. The character's ghostly, pallid complexion indicates how lost he is to the world, and yet he can't help but play to his audience. Slipping in and out of forced jollity, he cracks one sad joke after the next for the teary eyed throng, even wheeling out the odd showbiz anecdote. Appropriately, many of these revolve around celebrity funerals.

Heathcote Williams' dialogue sounds perfectly credible in Utton's hands, the writer having evidently gone to great pains to try to understand a hopelessly difficult man.