Imagine the scene: you’re sitting at home, perfectly content in your own company and thoughts. And then the doorbell rings. With heavy heart you answer the door and your spirits further plummets when you see who it actually is: an acquaintance with whom you have little in common and less affinity for. The immediate instinct is to slam the door in their face and hide in the airing cupboard until they go away. But you can’t do that. Because you’re British, damn it! So you invite them in and offer them a cup of tea. I mean, what’s the worst that could happen?
‘A Visit from Miss Prothero’ by Alan Bennett began its life as a 37 minute television play as part of BBC2’s Play of the Week strand in 1978, directed by Stephen Frears. Arthur Dodsworth was originally played by comedy actor Hugh Lloyd and appearing as the eponymous Miss Prothero was Patricia Routledge in her collaboration with Bennett. It soon found its way to the stage, usually twinned with another Alan Bennett one-act play called ‘Green Forms’ under the umbrella title of “The Office Suite” and was most revived in a 2007 tour with Routledge, again, in the title role.
In the play a recently retired widower Arthur Dodsworth is bothered by the visit of his former secretary – and the office busy-body – Peggy Prothero. She brings news of the office. He politely proffers tea and cake but, frankly, doesn’t care for tittle-tattle from his ex-work place. At least not until she tells him of the worrying changes that have been instituted by his successor, Mr Skinner from the Newport Pagnell office.
Is this Alan Bennett’s finest work? Well, no. It has dated into more of a period piece and it doesn’t have the unspoken subtext and nuance of his later ‘Talking Heads’ series in which Routledge would appear. In his best work the genius lies in what the characters don’t say and this play deals rather more with the explicit than the implicit. But dismissing a work of Alan Bennett for not being of the first water is a bit like binning a Van Gogh for being a nit under par.
Stu Jackson’s Mr. Dodsworth is a sympathetic figure, desperately optimistic about all the opportunities that retirement holds but equally balanced on the precipice of melancholy. His tormentor, Miss Prothero as tightly played by Helen Catherine Pain, is a seething keg of puritanical resentment. Equal parts spite and neediness.
Come the end Dodsworth has been stripped of everything he thought he had by Miss Prothero’s idle tongue. Even his electric retirement clock is running fast.
He’s caught in Miss Prothero’s web.
