After the film version, starring the inimitable Maggie Smith and Alex Jennings, was released in 2015, 'The Lady in the Van' has become a double edged sword for stage performance. On the one hand, it's a hugely popular and beloved title which guarantees bums on seats. On the other, you raise the spectre of audience members expecting mere impressions of Alan Bennett and the Great Dame herself.
The Rickmansworth Players production, running at the Pump House Theatre until 7th May, manages to tread the line between those expectations beautifully, presenting a wonderful evening of gentle comedy suffused with cerebral asides and thoughtful reflections. You leave both thoroughly entertained and perhaps a touch wiser.
Sarah Rodrigues direction is careful and unobtrusive, allowing Bennett's witty language the space and time to be fully enjoyed. The projected backdrops are pastel-shaded watercolours that are easy on the eye and suggest a relaxed 'tweeness' that is readily associated with Bennett's style. The lighting and sound are subtle and slick, never overwhelming the action or drawing focus. The only competitor for the audience attention is the van itself, whose magnificent entrance is an evening highlight.
That's not to say the car is the only star! The two Bennetts, Roger Saper as the elder and Matthew Knowles as the younger, carry the story forward confidently. Saper has the Bennett voice down almost to the syllable, while Knowles deserves an award for his facial choreography that captures, with a well-measured touch of comic exaggeration, Bennett's distaste for intimacy and general human contact.
The energy and pulse of the show flows through Miss Shepherd, and Julie Lilley brought her to glorious, gorgonesque life with dazzling aplomb. Her voice was a operatic foghorn, simultaneously melodic, controlled and painfully penetrating. Her enunciation would have satisfied the very strictest of old-school LAMDA teachers and worked cleverly in playing up the humorous contrast between the well-to-do Northern tones of Bennett and Shepherd's scruffy Southern superiority.
However, for me the thematic resonance of the night was not so much the North-South divide or reflections on class, but the comments the play had to make about a Britain facing the cost of living crisis. Questions about ownership and community, helping or ignoring those in need, and obsessing over property prices felt sadly pertinent. These themes are subtly drawn out through Bennett's exchanges with his neighbours, the self-assured suburban alpha male Rufus (played by Steve Bold) and his gossipy wife Pauline (played by Penny Merlin-Woods). Similarly, themes of social responsibility, honesty and integrity become apparent with the storyline concerning Underwood, played with chilling menace by Alistair Park.
Overall, the Rickmansworth Players presented a delightful evening of gentle comedy that eschewed simple nostalgia to tell a fresh and truthful human story. Highly recommended!
