Flashback: An Actor's Life

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Category:	Biography
Author:	David Barry
Publisher:	Melrose Books
Price:	£9.99
ISBN:	0-755202-26-0
Pages:	180
Reviewed in issue:	3

If you’re a theatre “luvvie” then this book will certainly appeal. Once you get beyond the clichéd and uninspiring cover, you’ll find a well written, entertaining and humorous autobiography. And if you’re of an age when you recall TV shows like Please Sir! and The Fenn Street Gang, then the life of this jobbing actor will take you back to your childhood in the seventies.

Yet this autobiography is more than a bit of self-indulgence. David Barry started his acting career at the top, on a tour of Titus Andronicus around Europe alongside Lord Olivier and Vivien Leigh. In this book he cleverly mixes his memories of that 1957 tour as a 14-year old boy with tales of his TV work in the seventies, and touring a Ray Cooney farce in 1998. Jumping across chapters from one period to the next could have been confusing and disjointed, but somehow it works, giving us an insight into the life of a working actor over fifty years.

Barry tells so many theatre anecdotes with a glint in the eye that it’s quite hard to put the book down. Tales of conflicts backstage, disasters that happened on stage and off, flops and successes, and above all stories about those actors at the height of their careers keep you turning the page… there’s always another recognisable name just a bit further on that catches the eye! And there’s no name-dropping here, no ‘getting back’ at former colleagues – the book is written with obvious affection for a successful career in the thick of the acting world.

David Barry is one of those lifelong jobbing actors, usually in work – whether that be in TV, film or on stage – but whom you’re unlikely to recognise by name. The few photos in the book are really interesting, but I wanted to see more… the few that show the author are of him as a lad, and after reading about his life I wanted to see him today. That slight criticism aside, this is a thoroughly good read, well written and well produced. Excellent!

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