Untold Stories

West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds

3/5

UNTOLD Stories first appeared as a collection of autobiographical writings in 2005, when Alan Bennett thought he was dying of cancer. 

It later came to be used as the basis of a theatrical work when composer George Fenton asked the Leeds playwright to collaborate on a 30th-anniversary commission for the Medici String Quartet. The result was Hymn, which forms one half of this double bill.

A monologue with music, performed by the Ligeti Quartet, it’s an amiable radio-style lecture in which Reece Dinsdale as Bennett discusses his formative musical experiences — hymns being drilled into him at grammar school, listening to the wireless on Sunday afternoons and going to concerts at Leeds town hall.

But the heart of the piece is his father’s disappointment at his son’s inability to follow in his footsteps as a self-taught violinist. It’s a sense of disappointment that continues into the bill’s second half, Cocktail Sticks. 

An autobiographical piece in which Bennett mourns his lack of childhood baggage, the series of memories are triggered by the discovery of a packet of unopened cocktail sticks at the funeral reception of his Mam, a show-stealing Marjorie Yates.

It’s an item that’s singularly unlikely to be found in the Bennett household. They value “being ordinary” despite Mam’s thwarted desire for social sophistication — she voraciously reads articles about cocktail parties and coffee mornings despite not understanding what they are — and the distaste of Dad (John Arthur) for verbiage. 

It’s an ordinariness reflected in Amanda Stoodley’s stage design, which is scattered with old furniture that will have a homely familiarity to many people in the audience. 

These small details, which inform the dialogue in typical Bennett style, really make the piece. Yet while it’s a funny and moving celebration of the ordinary, it fails to make a lasting impression.

Runs until June 21, box office: 0113 213-770.

Susan Darlington