To begin by unveiling a dark personal secret: I was in fact born on the birthday of, and at my sister's importunity named after, former Shadows bassist Terry "Jet" Harris. I might therefore be assumed to be almost genetically predisposed towards Cliff Richard, and indeed – having read the savage press receptions given to Heathcliff on its Birmingham opening last autumn – I turned up at the Hammersmith Apollo with a certain determination not to bay for blood.
For Heathcliff is not a disaster in the league of Bernadette or The Fields Of Ambrosia. Nor is it in their league in any sense: it was never intended to be a stand-alone stage musical, but was conceived by Sir Cliff as a dramatic vehicle for himself... well, semi-dramatic, then. Cliff, for all his stage and screen forays, is not an actor; what he does possess, after 40 years of experience, is a consummate skill at taking attitudinal cues from musical or lyrical moments and striking great shapes. His performance is entirely rooted in the songs, and in his own songs at that; when forced to lower from the side of the stage during other numbers he is frankly a little lost, and when reduced to the spoken word he is hamstrung by an erratic accent and an implausibly smouldering manner – not that he cannot smoulder, simply that no-one suspends disbelief for an instant in his gruff, bearded persona. The gasps of shock previously reported at the moment when Cliff, or rather 'cliff, strikes his pregnant wife were entirely inaudible last Thursday evening.
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Heathcliff
