Billy Walker (Photo courtesy of Billy Walker)
Reviewed by Joel Beers
Broadwater Black Box
Through November 23rd
RECOMMENDED
Billy Walker (photo courtesy of Billy Walker)
There’s a great deal to like in Joan Collins Blocked Me on Twitter, the one-person show written and performed by Billy Walker that is making its American premiere after a run at the 2025 Edinburgh Festival Fringe. On opening weekend, there was a little too much to like. Billed as an “hourish” show, it clocked in at something closer to 90 minutes. Not that Walker seems particularly concerned about conserving his energy: In addition to this four-Monday run, he’s also performing in two shows at the Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum.
Now, if this were one of those solo shows that amounts to little more than an extended monologue, that extra half-hour could feel interminable. And while the frequent asides to the audience, deliberate stops and starts, repeated lines and occasionally meandering stories sometimes send the show veering into the slow lane, Walker’s rambunctious energy, wit and sheer theatrical exuberance make the time pass entertainingly enough.
Instead of a confessional monologue, the show is a collection of comic sketches, character bits, telephone conversations, recorded video sequences, costume changes and audience interaction, all revolving around Theodore “Thor” Jones, a pretentious British actor whose ambitions far exceed his prospects.
Thor has come to Hollywood convinced that stardom is just around the corner. His ultimate dream is to appear alongside his idol, Joan Collins, in a reboot of Dynasty. Unfortunately, his attempts to ingratiate himself with the actress backfire when he sends lilies to her ailing cat, unaware that the flowers are poisonous to felines. Collins promptly blocks him on social media.
Meanwhile, Thor soldiers through an increasingly ridiculous series of auditions. He fields calls from his agent and recounts his theatrical exploits, professional disappointments and memories of Helga, the governess who helped raise him. Helga, it turns out, has a rather remarkable backstory of her own, including some improbable involvement in the early history of Fleetwood Mac.
Through it all, Thor’s monumental self-regard remains largely impervious to the mounting evidence that Hollywood may not be quite as enamored of him as he is of himself.
It’s a very inside-the-industry show, steeped in the headaches and humiliations familiar to struggling actors chasing a dream, along with a seemingly inexhaustible supply of Hollywood references and theatrical gossip. Among Thor’s more memorable indignities is a production of Aladdin at the Debbie Reynolds dinner theater in Florida, in which his moment in the spotlight as The Genie is somewhat compromised by a cloud of stage fog so thick that nobody can see him.
Walker is gold as the storyteller, confidant and occasional self-appointed psychoanalyst, simultaneously dissecting his own shortcomings while never missing an opportunity to extend a middle finger at the slings and arrows of outrageous theatrical misfortune.
But the show is more than a string of funny and awkward anecdotes, and that’s most apparent when Walker reveals the range of his talents. He’s a gifted comic actor, but there are moments when the bluster gives way to genuine vulnerability and sensitivity, particularly when he reminisces about his parents or engages in his frequent “conversations” with Helga. He’s also a talented singer and capable of slipping between accents and British dialects at a moment’s notice. Director Ann Noble makes effective use of the entire performance space, keeping the action lively even when the material threatens to lose momentum.
But the show’s most revealing moment, at least on opening night, came after the curtain fell.
In his remarks to the audience, Walker momentarily dropped the character of Thor, and with it the layers of comic exaggeration that had dominated the evening. He spoke about growing up gay and finding in Joan Collins’ portrayal of Alexis Carrington on “Dynasty” not merely a glamorous television star but an icon, a heroine and, perhaps most importantly, a sense of identity.
It’s clear that Thor’s (and Walker’s) obsession with Collins wasn’t/isn’t a convenient excuse for a string of theatrical misadventures. Beneath the auditions, the gossip, the bruised vanity and the relentless pursuit of stardom is something considerably more personal: the story of someone who found in a larger-than-life television character something that helped him make sense of his own life.
And perhaps that’s the most interesting thing about Joan Collins Blocked Me on Twitter: For all the time Thor spends trying to convince the world he’s somebody, the show’s most affecting moment comes when Walker stops pretending to be anybody but himself.
Broadwater Black Box, 6322 Santa Monica Blvd, Hollywood; Mon. 8 pm; thru Nov. 23. Runtime: 75 minutes with no intermission. joancollinsblockedmeontwitter.com
