The Telegraph: Joan Collins puts on the glitz for her panto debut

Dick Whittington, Birmingham Hippodrome, review

If you’re going to make your panto debut at the age of 77, you might as well do so stepping out from a giant rotating glitter ball, surrounded by scantily-clad performers and accompanied by a flourish of the theme tune from the Eighties American soap that made you an international star.

Joan Collins always had style, and, as Alexis Colby in Dynasty, became such a byword for bitchiness that she acquired the status of a gay icon. Her participation in Britain’s annual outbreak of arch villainy, kitsch decor and outlandish dressing-up must be counted long overdue.

Cracking her tail like a dominatrix’s whip, cavorting on stiletto heels in a silver-lined bodice, and generally looking a million dollars – and half her age – Collins is on hand to hog the limelight as Queen Rat in Dick Whittington at the Birmingham Hippodrome. Almost!

They pride themselves on doing things bigger, better and brasher at the Hippo, and, in a stroke of casting that verges on the over-zealous, they’ve hired self-styled “Lord of the Mince” Julian Clary to play the Spirit of the Bells.

Clary, you may recall, started out his comedy career with the Joan Collins Fan Club, but there’s nothing approaching fan-like subservience in the role as he plays it. Here you get two attention-seeking queens for the price of one.

Read the full review in The Telegraph online by clicking here.

Joan Collins packs in a star audience

Joan Collins continued to pack them in Tuesday night at Feinstein's at Loews Regency. In the audience wereBrooke Shields, interior designer Susan Gutfreund and financier husband John, Turner Classic Movies hostRobert Osborne and singer/actress Monique van Vooren. But the real buzz was onstage. Joan recalled that when she told Richard Burton "he would sleep with a snake," he responded, "only if it was wearing a skirt." And when Collins showed off her still remarkable flexibility by dropping into a full split, she declared, "That is what they call the British Open!"

Joan Collins at Feinstein's: Lovely Mention on Page Six of the NY Post Today:

The New York Observer: "Wine and Dynasty: Joan Collins at Feinstein's"

By Rex Reed
November 22, 2010 9:13 p.m.






Joan Collins has devoted her life to illusion, so in the third act of her career, why hold back now? Watching her New York nightclub debut at Feinstein's at Loew's Regency, it was reassuring to discover she has lost none of the beauty, self-effacing humor or erotic appeal that turned her into the kind of popular, antediluvian icon that is never dated, and woe to the macho adversary or unwise female contestant who challenges her. You can accuse her of hanging on beyond her prime, but if you meet her in a dark alley, bring Mace. I might have thought otherwise if I had not seen her immediately after suffering through a Broadway matinee of Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, a junk pile of dreck that hideously resembles a garbage strike in downtown Newark. After the trashy pulchritude crashing its way through that train wreck, Joan Collins is as fresh, funny and full of paprika as she was when she burst upon the Cinemascope screen in the 1950s. She's ageless, and she even does an acrobatic split to prove it.


Read Rex Reed's full review in the New York Observer by clicking here.

One Night with Joan - NYDaily News Review: Collins seduces audience with her post-Dynasty Charms

Joe Dziemianowicz
Thursday, November 18th 2010, 4:00 AM

She's got the iconic red lips, man-eater attitude and padded shoulders that helped define the '80s on "Dynasty."
While Joan Collins is famous for acting up as evil Alexis on the glitzy prime-time soap, arguably her best performance came post-"Dynasty."

And you probably didn't see it.

She delivered it playing herself in a real-life court battle with Random House in the mid-'90s over her book manuscript. She came out smiling. And still is.

That's one of the familiar, but juicy, bits Collins shares in her solo memoir, "One Night With Joan," at Feinstein's through Nov. 27, a dishy affair that goes down easy.

Read the full review in the NYDaily News by clicking here.