Sweet portrait of a painter

Evening Standard's master critic Brian Sewell collaborated in writing this short and sweetish portrait of England's first great painter, William Hogarth. It's a strange piece, with less development over its 50 minutes than the man himself got into one picture, let alone a series.

Yet, despite the idiosyncrasies of performance and writing alike, a personality does emerge, and not an unpleasant one at that.

The conceit of the piece is that a dying Hogarth is feeling guilty about his
servants, whose visages he has used in low satire. So he considers them one by one, aided by an on-stage copy of his painting Hogarth's Servants.

It's a peg to hang a monologue on, and it suits the play's thesis, that the satirist who attacked the world did so out of love for its weaker denizens.

There are memories of Hogarth's life, and a great deal of reflection upon his relationship with society. The prose is fractured and grandiloquent, best in the moments of release before the close.

Co-writer Timothy Ackroyd's performance matches the script with the sort of mannered gesture and vocal trickery you associate with a bygone theatrical era.

You get used to it after a while, but, given Mr Sewell is the only other performer - a berobed, bare-legged prologue - familiar vowels are hard to come by.

Hogarth, The Compassionate Satirist