The late Simon Gray, a gifted novelist and playwright, boasted of smoking 60 cigarettes a day for 50 years. At Gray’s behest, Hugh Whitemore has now adapted two of the writer’s journals into a witty and moving piece of theatre, beautifully directed by Richard Eyre.

The first act deals with Gray’s childhood, his adolescent crush on a fellow pupil, his first sexual encounter as a 25-year-old and, more poignantly, his relationship with his parents.

It ends with him being told he has incurable lung cancer.

What follows is his reaction to this news and how he coped with it. There are hilarious accounts of the doctors and nursing staff he dealt with.

Laughing at cancer seems permissible here, as the jokes come from the sufferer, who was content to poke fun at himself and his experiences, and the writing reflects the high standard of Gray’s literacy.

Whitemore has chosen to use three actors, one a woman, to play Gray.

This clever device adds breadth to the piece, as the characters bounce reminiscences in order to establish the truths behind the fragility of memory.

There are fine performances from Jasper Britton, Nicholas Le Prevost and Felicity Kendal as the three Simons, each working in harmony with the others as they tease out the many strands of Gray’s character.

They also play other people encountered during the telling of the story.

Le Prevost provides great comedy as a specialist resembling a chipmunk in school boy’s clothing, and Kendal is hilarious as the West Indian nurse and aspiring novelist, trying to get publishing advice while removing his catheter, provoking the line, “I only screamed once... continuously.”

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