Title: The Lady in the Van by Alan Bennett
Headings: The Lady in the Van
The Lady in the Van
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Content: So in reality the book of the play is probably a three star-it is interesting and funny, saddening, heartfelt, completely Bennettesque (of course) and the dialogue is just superb. But it can only really give you so much and there is very little description beyond the staging, which is fair enough, but not quite enough and the way Bennett writes it (I don't feel like I am worthy of calling him Alan) purposefully in that way means that it's mostly just a book full of dialogue. However, adding the fact that I've seen the film (not the play, which would have been better but sadly cannot be rectified right now) I can add more to my opinion. Every word that Miss Shepherd says is Maggie Smith's-she portrayed her so wonderfully-and convincingly-that I simply can't get her out of my mind. Miss Shepherd the character-saying nothing of the actual real-life person-is superbly cantankerous and annoying, and so utterly devastatingly pitiful. Although she is one woman, she is an amalgamation of women from the previous generation who, via various "ideals" of what women should and should not do, were basically told to be either a Nun or a Wife. She reminds me a lot of those annoying characters you get in sitcoms or comedy films-the ones that usually die first-who are hilarious and fun to see because they're not real and you don't have to put up with them. But Bennett did have to put up with her: for fifteen years until her death from the moment she wheeled her van in to his front garden. It is a wonderful tale, but it's not so much a tale as a long, drawn-out anecdote.