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Graham Seed plays the judge in An Eligible Man |
The judge who ended up on the ‘most wanted’ list
With its star cast and feel-good factor, Rosemary Friedman’s latest play at Hampstead’s New End Theatre, could well transfer to the West End, writes Gerald Isaaman
HE'S an eligible man – and a lucky one.
When His Honour Judge Christopher Osgood sadly becomes a widower, he sets out to seek a new woman with all the admirable talents of his late wife.
And such is his charisma and charm, he finds himself pursued by no fewer than three women.
Lucille seduces him. Sally offers intellectual companionship and Jo introduces him to a glamorous social life.
Which one will be successful in becoming the new spouse?
You will have to see Rosemary Friedman’s new play, An Eligible Man, which started a six-week run at Hampstead’s New End Theatre last night (Wednesday), to discover the answer for yourself because Rosemary is not giving it away in advance.
You might not even get the correct answer if you find a copy of her 1989 best-selling novel on which the play is based, because, as Rosemary declares: “You have to forget a book completely when you transform it into a play. The structure is so different. A play is so much more immediate and you have to cut and cut the narrative in favour of dialogue. That’s what attracts me. And I’ve got all the best dialogue in the play.”
While she has her concerns about the tremendous changes that have taken place in her lifetime to the ethos of marriage – how so many couples never bother with it and others find themselves seeking IVF treatment because they have left it too late for children – she insists that An Eligible Man has no social message as such.
“The play is about love or attraction among older people,” she tells me at her penthouse home overlooking Regent’s Park. “You can have a love affair whether you are 60 or 16. The judge is looking for everything he found in his late wife and, unfortunately, finds them in three different women. So he is faced with having to make a choice.”
Yet the judge, played by Graham Seed, best known as Nigel Pargetter in radio’s The Archers, is fortunate in being pursued by three women, one of them played by elegant Patricia Potter, alias Dr Diane Lloyd of Holby City fame.
“Women who become widows find it hard to discover a new man,” says Rosemary. “My observation is that eligible men always have women running after them.
“This particular man is a judge living in Hampstead. He’s well set up, educated, intelligent, he’s got money and is sexually attractive. And he’s also a very kind man, something women do go for, though he is not perfect by any means.”
And she adds: “There is a happy outcome. I like upbeat endings, feel- good endings, but there has to be some conflict along the way. There’s enough misery around without people going to the theatre to see more.
“In a way it’s a poignant comedy of grief and also about the nature of loss that we all face.”
Rosemary hopes that the play, her third, might transfer to the West End given its star cast chosen from no fewer than 850 applicants for the seven parts, among them her own actress grand-daughter Emily Sidonie, who was sadly unsuccessful.
But she is conscious that the West End is now packed with “safe musicals” with few managements willing to risk a new play, which might require an investment of up to £500,000.
“The theatres I tried were very encouraging with their responses and said, ‘You get it put on in a try-out theatre and we’ll come and see it’,” Rosemary recalls. “I had a good relationship with New End, who did my last play Change of Heart in 2004, and went there. So we shall wait and see what happens.”
Meanwhile, she does have one special satisfaction in seeing her own eligible man come to life at New End Theatre, which stands opposite what was once New End Hospital.
“That’s the hospital where my husband Dennis trained as a doctor when we first met,” she reveals. “And he used to arrange for me to come in the ambulance!”
There’s drama for you.
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