"Alan Bennett is theatre's most treasured National Treasure." —
The Independent (London)
Waiting for the Telegram, played by veteran San Miguel actor Lola Smith, is a touching story of the inner life of an astute, somewhat cynical woman in a nursing home, as a newly formed attachment for one of her caregivers awakens regrets for paths not taken more than seventy years past. The piece, an adaptation of Bennett’s original version, is set in New York.
The Hand of God, played by Henrietta Weekes, follows the machinations of Celia, an antiques dealer who brazenly aids elderly neighbors for the sole purpose of acquiring their treasures on the cheap when they die. When one of her neighbors turns sickly, her carrion crow-like patience is thwarted by the arrival of a neice who turns the estate over to an auction house and leaves her with a small box of bric-a-brac, the value of which she assumes is minimal. Ah, if she'd only watched the telly!
Bed Among the Lentils, played by Phoebe Greyson, portrays Susan, an alcoholic vicar’s wife with acerbic wit, who distracts herself from Geoffrey, her ambitious, insensitive husband by having an affair with Mr. Ramesh, an Asian grocer. Finally on the wagon, she grudgingly attributes her newfound sobriety not to the grocer, but rather to "Geoffrey's chum, the Diety, moving in his well-known mysterious way."