The English eccentrics

Sheridan Morley, the director, says I'm to tell you? no, seriously, we'll be doing songs and sketches - including material by Harold Pinter, Alan Bennett and Peter Cook that hasn't been seen since the Fifties. They started off as sketch writers who worked for radio, so this is a way of seeing them before they became playwrights. We're wading through hours of material. We have to be brutal. If it's not funny enough, out it must go. Most of it stands up pretty well.

It's great to see how Pinter and Bennett began their careers. Some of the pieces are quite simple and very silly. One involves a phone call, there's another sketch about sending a telegram. Oh, and there's a Jonathan Cecil mini-play based on N.O.R.W.I.C.H. - (k)nickers off ready when I come home! There are three bits of Pinter. My favourite features two old ladies in a soup kitchen. Some of the Peter Cook stuff may be ditched because it's very well-known. We don't want an end-of-school-term performance - 'And now I will deliver my monologue.' The musical content has been kept within 1958 to 1964 but we might bend that to include some Sondheim. There's a Tom Lehrer revue song and a particularly tasteful ditty from 1939 called 'Even Hitler Had A Mother' which was banned at the time.

I suppose we want to bring back the notion of the revue as opposed to the review. In terms of the cast, Frank Thornton (fourth from right) and Thelma Ruby (third from right) have a huge following and we all attract a different crowd. Sheridan feels, and I take this as a compliment, that the days of the mad eccentric actor have gone and so he's collected some new eccentrics to do the material justice. We really want to sail close to the wind and make this happen for the 21st century.

The Jermyn Street Revue, Tue 2 May-Sat 3 Jun, Jermyn Street Theatre, 16B Jermyn Street, SW1 (020-7287 2875).