RADIO: 'THE GUV'NOR: HENRY IRVING & THE BELLS', BBC RADIO 4 (1999)

Broadcast date: 17th November, 1999

'Henry Irving was just another actor and the Lyceum was a struggling London theatre when in 1871 The Bells was staged with Irving in the main role. The Guv'nor: Henry Irving and The Bells (Radio 4, 2.15pm), written by Corin Redgrave, recreates the story of how Irving made his career by playing Matthias, an innkeeper with a guilty secret, and draws unnerving parallels between the plot and the great actor's own life. Redgrave's play has the requisite reek of greasepaint, and with TP McKenna in the role of Bram Stoker, Irving's erstwhile manager and later biographer,a whiff of sulphur accompanies the dramatisation of the life of Victorian England's greatest tragedian.' (Isobel Montgomery/The Guardian)