One of the best nights of my life: Hampstead Theatre’s Peggy For You reviewed

Hampstead Theatre has revived a play about Peggy Ramsay, the legendary West End agent who shaped the careers of Joe Orton, Robert Bolt, David Hare and others. We first meet her on the phone to a dramatist whose new script is good but, warns Peggy, it must not be produced because it will damage his career. She hates ‘fine writing’ and she knows how easily a scribbler can be corrupted by praise, awards and cash. Peggy is one of those rare creatures whom everyone wants to please and whose faults are considered charming oddities. Some might find her maddeningly fey but this show, directed by Richard Wilson, is part of the fan club.

She has clients scattered across Yorkshire and she assumes that they must be next-door neighbours. This faintly snotty attitude is offset by her warmth and curiosity, and she sends out her secretary (whose name she has forgotten) to buy a map of Yorkshire so that she can learn how far Hull is from Scarborough. Her nature is a weird blend of naivety and wisdom. She has the happy innocence of a princess and the cut-throat instincts of a barrow boy. When a young writer asks, ‘what is a play?’ she devotes the rest of the afternoon to investigating this absorbing but arcane question. Three dramatists appear in the script: a prosperous has-been, a gormless beginner and a triumphant West End prodigy. It’s rare to find writers portrayed in dramas (Chekhov’s The Seagull springs to mind, as does Edward Bond’s Bingo), and the scribblers are usually depicted as bitter, shallow snarks. Here, they seem to be friendly, decent and respectful of each others’ talent. Who would have known it?

The dramatist Alan Plater must have had the time of his life writing this toasty-warm love letter to a titan of 20th-century theatre.