West Yorkshire Playhouse really went to town for this production of Alan Bennett’s play The lady in the Van when they themed the mens’ toilet lighting to pink and mauve ultra violet. This is another of Alan Bennett’s plays dealing with old women and toilet humour. This play directed by Ian Brown tells the story of a non too clean, incontinent woman who parks her van in Bennett’s garden for fifteen years and proceeds to give Bennett his material.

So what of the play and the acting? The minimalist scenery by Dick Bird is great on windows, but poor on old van support. The brilliantly novel approach using two actors for the main character was wasted on Bennett’s predictable jokes scattered throughout an ordinary script. When we come to the acting we see pure brilliance from the three main actors. Alan Scates plays Alan Bennett, the one that has contact with the cast, and Malcolm James who plays his conscience or alto ego. Both actors look and sound like Bennett and presumably behave like him. The performances are stunning and make you want to see more of these actors. Now the ’Lady in the Van“ Miss Shepherd gives Ann Rye the chance to show how good an actress she is and what can be done with an unpalatable character. Worth going to see the acting of these three alone, but we must not forget the rest of the cast who made this a smooth run through an unpalatable subject that needed to be aired and led to a predicable conclusion.

Not a play for everyone, but the audience showed their appreciation at the end and went home turning over what they had seen and wondering why the stage plays never appear to be from same man they have seen on television and remember from the past. It would be nice to see Alan Bennett tackle something different and put his considerable talents to a new challenge. Never the less this was an interesting play dealing with a problem subject which it accomplished well. © BA

“The Lady in the Van” is in Leeds from the 11th May, 2001 to the 15th June, 2002.