Here’s your chance to see yet another award winning performance: Maggie Kirkpatrick in Alan Plater’s comedy Peggy For You at the Marian Street Theatre. Just how good is Kirkpatrick? If they gave open awards for acting, rather than best male and best female, she would give the likes of Bille Brown (Troilus & Cressida, Opera House Drama Theatre) a run for his money. Kirkpatrick tops a 35 year career in theatre, TV, films, musicals and even cabaret as the Australian Margaret Francesca Ramsay, who became the foul-mouthed, quick witted and knowledgeable doyen of play agents in London. Note the words “play agent”, which is how she liked to be known, not a playwrights’ agent. Her abiding devotion was to the play itself, although she was more than a little helpful and often brutally frank, to the writers, whether seeking to be clients of hers or established members of he stable. 

In Plater’s comedy, one of the funniest I’ve seen, we meet the redoubtable Peggy (everyone in the world she commands is referred to by their first names, not surnames) in another brilliantly realistic set (her offices) by the Marian’s designer Graham Maclean. In the outer office is receptionist Tessa (Michelle Doake), whose name the ebullient Peggy can never remember - one of a hundred sources of laughter in this entertaining play; which, by the way, turns a little dark in the second interval. The title is far from ideal.  It is what Tessa says when she has reached someone on the phone on Peggy's behalf: “Peggy for you !” Another piece of incidental information that shouldn’t make any difference to the enjoyment of the play: writers and entrepreneurs attending the opening of Marian Street said Kirkpatrick’s Peggy was uncannily like the Peggy they knew (she died in 1991.) John Krummel is one of those,  and as director of the Plater comedy, he is right on target;  as are the four actors who share the stage with Kirkpatrick (albeit not with equal opportunities to shine). They are Michelle Doake; Amos Szeps (yes, son of Henri), sheepishly offering his first play for Peggy’s consideration; David Downer, one of the stable who does not shrink from matching words with Peggy; and Mark Kilmurry as a stable mate, too handsome and talented for his own good.

If you have anything to do with the theatre, you will have a special affinity with Plater’s situations, jokes and references; but Peggy For You is wonderful entertainment for anyone, whether attuned to theatre talk or not.
 

NB  Maggie did indeed receive a prestigious Mo Award for her performance in this play.

Reviewed by Peter Morrison in Australian Jewish News 
20th October 2000