The Lady in the Van
by Alan Bennett
At the end of the 1960s, Alan Bennett encountered Miss Shepherd, an elderly eccentric living in a van near his home in Camden Town. It was an encounter which was to lead, eventually, to Miss Shepherd’s moving her van into his garden in 1974 for ‘two or three months’ – but those three months extended to fifteen years. The Lady in the Van is the funny and moving dramatisation of his "smelly" cohabitation with Miss Shepherd, and of her death in 1989.
The play is hilariously funny in parts, as Bennett casts his unsentimental eye over the daily habits of a “bigoted, blinkered, cantankerous, devious, unforgiving, self-centred, rank, rude, car-mad cow” and examines, ironically, his own motivation in putting up with her for all those years. Why does he let her stay? Social conscience? Guilt, because his own mother suffers from mental illness and has been placed in a home? Is it because, as he claims, it was easier to say “yes” than “no”? Or is Alan Bennett, the writer, intrigued and fascinated by this highly colourful character who would, after all, make a good subject for a play one day?
Alongside the humour, there is a darker thread running through the text, touching on homelessness, mental illness and social responsibility. Miss Shepherd, for all her faults (and she has many), is one of society’s outcasts and she has a story to be told. The chain of events which has led to her fending for herself in the street is slowly revealed, the mystery unfolded: we learn why she is being blackmailed, why music tortures her, why she prays so intensely.
With his characteristic love of the idiosyncrasies of language and the quirks of human nature, Alan Bennett presents a range of characters in this unsparing yet compassionate account of Miss Shepherd and of Camden Town in the 70s and 80s.
The author
Regarded with great affection by the British public, Alan Bennett or “Alan Bennett, National Treasure,” as he has come to be labelled, was born in Leeds in 1934. He began his stage and writing career with the satirical revue “Beyond the Fringe”, and his prolific output includes “The Madness of King George”, “The History Boys” and “Talking Heads”. His new play “The Habit of Art” opens at The National Theatre, London, on November 5th 2009.
The world première of The Lady in the Van was at the Queen's Theatre, London, with Dame Maggie Smith as “The Lady”.