HABEAS CORPUS

By Alan Bennett

Performed at the Nuffield Theatre on October 26^th to 30^th, 1976

"Alan Bennett's HABEAS CORPUS is a real turn-up for the book. He has now written a gorgeously vulgar but densely plotted farce that is a downright celebration of sex and the human body. The effect is rather like seeing an animated McGill postcard in which the captions have been written by an elegant verbal stylist Bennett starts out with a set of comic stereotypes; lecherous GP, unscaleably mountainous wife, celibate Canon, flat-chested spinster, cantilevered sex-pot, invertebrate hypochondriac, and arrogant colonialist. He then sets the puppets in motion by assuming they are all in the grip of some over-riding physical obsession; the doctor by unassuagable lust, the breastless wonder by the need for uplift, the unfired canon by the loss of virginity. Identities are mistaken, wires crossed and it is typical of Bennett’s method that a falsie-fitter, fresh from a crash course in Leatherhead, should stumble into the proceedings aiming his prehensile fingers at all the wrong bosoms".

Michael Billington

in the GUARDIAN

The Cast

For the Maskers