Hampstead Theatre is reviving plays originally produced there more than 50 years ago and into the mix comes Peggy For You about London’s most famous literary agent Margaret Ramsay.  From the 1950s she dominated in the field of play agents from her small office at the top of Goodwin’s Court, a small alley off St Martin’s Lane which she told us had once been a brothel. 

Peggy Ramsay was born in Australia, lived in South Africa where she was unhappily married to Norman Ramsay but left him to come to England in 1929.  He was under investigation in South Africa.  She worked for an opera company and as an actress. 

She was famously witty and acerbic; her barbed wit was often at the expense of her clients but she had a magnetism which also attracted.  Alan Plater’s play in two acts shows both her rapid fire wit and in the second half, another side of her which seemed harsh.

I saw the original production in 2000 after it transferred from Hampstead to the West End with Maureen Lipman in the role where she was very amusing in the first act but didn’t have the malice to convey Peggy’s more difficult side. 

Under Richard Wilson’s direction, Tamsin Greig is superb.  She is the foxy lady stretched out on her chaise longue, often barefoot she crosses her legs provocatively and arches her foot so as to extend her legs.  This physical flirtation is there whenever there is a male playwright in the room. 

She liked difference and edginess: hence her taking on Caryl Churchill, Edward Bond and Joe Orton.  She famously fell out with Prick Up Your Ears playwright John Lahr about Orton.  In the opening scene she has been up all night to go to a police station, where she obtained bail for one of her authors. 

Author Alan Plater recalls an incident where she mixed up the cheques due to Alan Ayckbourn in Scarborough and Alan Plater in Hull.  Thank goodness Peggy didn’t have to grapple with data protection laws! Both being north of Watford, with the arrogance of Southerners, Peggy thinks the Alans must live in adjoining streets.  Ayckbourn was shocked at the size of Plater’s cheque from writing for television.