Between the stage and TV plays and journals that are his core work, Alan Bennett has published six short stories and novellas, generally featuring a dull life convulsed by a late erotic awakening, through the agency of a stranger such as a shopkeeper, lodger or librarian.
Nottingham Playhouse has added to Bennett’s theatrical canon by adapting this 1996 tale in which Rosemary and Maurice Ransome, a pompous solicitor and his gaslighted wife, come home to find their mansion flat stripped of everything including carpets and an oven slow-cooking a casserole. Through Mr Anwar’s copious emporium, Mrs Ransome replaces her household effects but also feels her internal furniture shifting.
