Tamsin Greig is sharp and shiny as a new pin as the charismatic agent in Alan Plater’s no-holds-barred comic portrait of Peggy Ramsey

Alan Plater’s acerbic tribute to Peggy Ramsay, the agent he shared with a galaxy of fellow playwrights, premiered at Hampstead Theatre in 1999 with Maureen Lipman in the title role, subsequently transferring to the West End. Richard Wilson’s sparky new production of Plater’s day in the life, featuring Tamsin Greig as Peggy, is a fitting climax to Hampstead’s season of revivals marking its 60th birthday.

Margaret Francesca "Peggy" Ramsay, whose father was Jewish, was born in Australia, brought up in South Africa and moved to England in 1929 during a brief unhappy marriage. Here, she began her career onstage before finding her niche in the creative process as a vital liaison between playwrights and theatrical management, earning the well-worn adjective ‘legendary’, with a stellar client list including Jewish writers from Isaac Babel to Michael Rosen.

Ramsay was renowned for her incisive wit and acerbic put downs. Plater shares the highs and lows through which she puts ‘her’ playwrights. Greig, beloved for roles including the put-upon Jewish mum serving up TV’s Friday Night Dinner, couples just the right blend of warmth, intelligence and razor-sharp wit to deliver such nuanced advice as “You should write a novel, get all that fine writing out of your system.” She can be rather more direct too, provoking audience laughter with her response to what she considers a laughable financial offer: “You set new standards of impertinence, even for an American”.

 As the title suggests, the phone is Greig’s main co-star, ringing throughout the action, becoming more and more intrusive. Greig’s body language on answering is delicious, wielding her tortoiseshell glasses weapon-like for emphasis as she languidly stretches stockinged legs on her office chaise longue or perches on her desk. 

The play is shaped through her interactions with a series of playwrights at different career stages. The newcomer Simon, diffidently proffering a tatty flyer for his unpromisingly titled ‘Shades of Nothingness’, is both teased and tantalised by Peggy, who suggests a reading list of Ibsen and Gorki for tips on how “to illuminate the gloom”. Josh Finan is pitch perfect as the awkward hopeful shuffling diffidently into her homely two-room office, decorated with posters of her clients’ triumphs (designer James Cotterill). 

Success is vividly represented by Jos Vantyler’s Philip, “appallingly successful and exceedingly rich” as Peggy tells Simon. When he – funny, confident, smartly overdressed – bounds into the office, armed with a bottle of champagne to celebrate his forthcoming marriage, Peggy does not hide her jealousy. The veteran forty-something cynic Henry, wonderfully embodied as a bluff Northerner by Trevor Fox, doesn’t mince his words. Offered a chocolate biscuit by Peggy’s long-suffering secretary Tessa (all neat tact and discretion in Danusia Samal’s superb and sympathetic performance), he rejoins “Chocolate biscuits. Bugger me. There’s sophistication for you.” 

Act Two reveals a darker side to Peggy as the phone intrudes with requests from newspapers for comments on the untimely death of a fourth client, David. Wheeling and dealing on behalf of those she puts forward to write David’s obituary is all part of the job for Peggy. It would be sentimental to imagine otherwise. Called out by Henry for not showing compassion, she retorts “I don’t represent the writers, I represent their work.”

This is an evening of verbal fireworks, perhaps most appreciated by theatre aficionados.

By Judi Herman

Photos by Helen Maybanks

Peggy for You runs until Saturday 29 January. 7.30pm, 2.30pm (Thu & Sat only). £18-£37. Hampstead Theatre, NW3 3EU. hampsteadtheatre.co.uk