A crown for the Roundhead

As well as being an actor, writer and director, Oliver Ford Davies once worked as a history lecturer at Edinburgh University. Following his latest play, he might like to add the role of PR agent to his already impressive CV.

For King Cromwell, set on one crucial day in 1657, towards the end of the Lord Protector's life, certainly presents a man of huge contradictions and a more balanced and lively portrayal of one widely regarded as the ultimate puritan, a killjoy who closed theatres and smashed stained-glass windows.

This appealingly accessible drama finds the man who would not be king in name tetchily holed up after an assassination attempt and suffering from kidney stones. His dilemma is whether to accept Parliament's offer of the crown and make his unwilling son the heir, or to refuse and allow the militaristic Lambert to be his successor as Lord Protector and maintain the Republic he fought for.

Ford Davies's grouchy Cromwell is both passionate and cynical about a country he sees as godless. In response to the people's desire for the security of a monarch, though, he tries the orb and sceptre for size. "How do I look?" he asks, intriguingly suggesting a hint of uncharacteristic vanity.

Among those adding their penn'orth to the debate are poet and wannabe politician Andrew Marvell (a nicely sagacious Sean Baker), who is grilled about his eulogy, An Horatian Ode Upon Cromwell's Return From Ireland. There is comic relief, too, as Cromwell dismisses Monteverdi's "new music" as "shite" and takes anti-Papist delight in approving a fashionably new opera, The Cruelty Of The Spaniards In Peru.

As the author admits, historical drama inevitably involves compression and the benefit of hindsight, and the likes of Cromwell's comment on Ireland's unfavourable reaction to his murderous campaign there - "That'll pass in a generation or two, God willing" - ring rather archly, but Sam Walters's solid production makes for an entertaining history lesson.

King Cromwell