Review: Peggy For You by Robin Hood Theatre Company at Averham

The spotlight is firmly on formidable theatre agent Margaret Ramsay in Robin Hood Theatre Company’s latest production – and she certainly takes the time to shine.

Peggy For You, by Alan Plater, runs at the Robin Hood Theatre, Averham, until Saturday and is another light-hearted entertaining evening.
The Peggy of the title is Margaret ‘Peggy’ Ramsay, the well-known theatre agent to many successful writers from the Sixties to the Eighties. Written by one of her clients, it really seems to capture her essence.

Directed by Clive Harmston, It is set over the course of a single – imagined – day in her office in the late Sixties where she meets a succession of clients and gently tortures her poor put-upon secretary Tessa (Rebecca Briggs-Price).

First through the door to receive the Peggy treatment is debutant playwright Simon (Simon Burgess) who is given lots of unlikely advice between Peggy’s various phone calls and distractions – such as discovering ‘the North’ and, in particularly, Yorkshire. is much bigger than thought.

He is followed by high-flying star Henry (Mark Homer) who, after announcing his up-coming marriage, is whisked off to lunch to be persuaded otherwise by Peggy, who believes a miserable homelife is the secret to good writing.

Finally, there is the once-successful, now fading Philip (Cavan McLaughlin) who plays a part that combines the serious and comedy as the pair lock horns over his plans for the future.

But the star of the piece is Jill Morris as Peggy. I knew little about the agent but she was played just how I imagined her to be in real life – feisty, sweary, head strong and fiercesome.Her part is full of witty one-liners and pearls of wisdom.

It is a real insight into the word of theatre, but should not only appeal to theatre fans. This is a witty look at relationships – and the remarkable life and career of one woman who deserves that time in the spotlight.