album, 52nd Street (and Other Tales). He was the narrator for Lamont's Sherlock Holmes Suite, commissioned by the City of London to commemorate the first appearance of Sherlock Holmes in The Strand magazine. Theatre Treasure Island Bernard Miles gave Milligan his first straight acting role, as Ben Gunn, in the Mermaid Theatre production of Treasure Island. Miles described Milligan as: Treasure Island played twice daily through the winter of 1961–62 and was an annual production at the Mermaid Theatre for some years. In the 1968 production, Barry Humphries played the role of Long John Silver, alongside William Rushton as Squire Trelawney and Milligan as Ben Gunn. To Humphries, Milligan's "best performance must surely have been as Ben Gunn ..., Milligan stole the show every night, in a makeup which took at least an hour to apply. His appearance on stage always brought a roar of delight from the kids in the audience and Spike had soon left the text far behind as he went off into a riff of sublime absurdity." The Bedsitting Room In 1961–62, during the long pauses between the matinee and the evening show of Treasure Island, Milligan began talking to Miles about the idea he and John Antrobus were exploring, of a dramatised post-nuclear world. This became the one-act play The Bedsitting Room, which Milligan co-wrote with John Antrobus and which premiered at the Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury on 12 February 1962. It was adapted to a longer play and staged by Miles at London's Mermaid Theatre, making its debut on 31 January 1963. It was a critical and commercial success and was revived in 1967 with a provincial tour before opening at London's Saville Theatre on 3 May 1967. Richard Lester later directed a film version, released in 1969. Oblomov Tiring of comedic roles, Milligan sought out more serious material. He had read Ivan Goncharov's Oblomov and felt a kinship with the title character, who declines to leave his bed to face the world. According to Scudamore's biography: The novel had been adapted for the stage by Italian writer Riccardo Aragno. Aragno's script for Oblomov was bought by Milligan's production company in early 1964. Milligan had long nurtured hopes of transitioning from comedy to serious drama. To this end, Milligan rehearsed for seven weeks with director Frank Dunlop and castmates Joan Greenwood, Bill Owen, and Valentine Dyall at the Lyric Hammersmith. The first preview was on