Playing Sandwiches/A Lady of Letters

It’s a tough one but this double bill of Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads monologues surely has to stand as the most enticing pairing of the four in the Bridge’s monologues season. Partly that’s due to the plays themselves: ‘A Lady of Letters’, about the epistle-penning busybody Miss Ruddock is one of only two inclusions from the peerless 1989 original series. And ‘Playing Sandwiches’, about Wilfred, a parks attendant with a shadowy past he’s struggling to escape, is the outstanding play from the 1998 second series. Really though, it’s about the actors: Imelda Staunton and Lucian Msamati are major headline stars in their own right, and in normal circumstances it would be ridiculous to be able to see them on a bill like this, with tickets still available.