Our first theatre visit of that year, to the tiny New End Theatre in Hampstead. Wicked difficult to park around there and I seem to recall a very cold, perhaps even slightly icy evening.
The evening was a bit of a “West Fest”, with roles not only for Benedick as writer but also second-cousin-by-marriage Prunella Scales and young Jerusha West performing.
The New End Theatre is a quirky place – a converted mortuary, which only seats a few dozen people.
I remember observing to Janie that Prunella Scales had seen me perform in front of far larger audiences than that of the New End. When I was in Alleyn’s School plays, the West Family (Tim, Prunella and Sam, the latter being two or three years below me at the school) would relentlessly turn up to watch. Those evenings must have been an enlightening experience for that theatrical family I am sure. But I digress.
Benedick’s play was actually a sequence of monologues. As such, I recall it lacked dramatic intensity and coherence as a single work, but the miniature stories were well written and were quite interesting performance pieces, especially Prunella’s one.
It seems the production did the rounds for some time after the New End – one or two on-line reviews from the New End itself to be found plus a few from elsewhere – click here.