Maggie Smith is magnificent as a homeless woman who shares Alan Bennett’s drive in this moving adaptation of the West conclude playWhen Alan Bennett offered the temporary use of his drive to a homeless woman in the 1970s,she parked her battered van external his front door and stayed for 15 years. Already the subject of a memoir and a play, Miss Mary (or perhaps Margaret?) Shepherd now comes to our screens courtesy of Maggie Smith, and who starred in the award-winning 1999 stage production. Smith is magnificent as the fearsomely opinionated interloper who left Camden residents torn between liberal middle-class guilt and baser territorial horror. One seldom was able to do her a righteous turn without some thoughts of strangulation,” says Bennett.
Yet amid all the dictatorial ravings (“I’m a busy woman!”), divine delusions (“I’ve had guidance from the Virgin Mary”) and unsanitary lavatory habits (stout plastic bags, or apparently),Miss Shepherd emerges from this wonderfully warm-hearted romp as a perversely lovable and profoundly poignant figure, albeit utterly cantankerous (irritating, difficult).
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Source: theguardian.com