About the Play:

Bed Among the Lentils is a dramatic monologue by Alan Bennett. Susan, a frustrated vicar's wife with a fondness for sherry, distracts herself from her ambitious husband and his doting parishioners by conducting an affair with a local grocer shop owner, discovering something about herself and God in the process. Particularly suitable for fringe festivals.

Bed Among the Lentils features Susan, a frustrated vicar's wife with a fondness for sherry. Susan is a failure when it comes to jam-making and flower-arranging and isn't at all sure about God; how unfortunate for her that she is married to Geoffrey, a popular and respected vicar who treats her in an intensely patronizing manner and expects her to conform to her role as vicar's wife. Her life takes an interesting turn when she discovers a semblance of happiness with a local grocer, Ramesh Ramesh. Bed Among the Lentils is a bleakly hilarious, dark and painful monologue, packed with insights and sparkling satire.

Bed Among The Lentils is one of the best known of the Talking Heads series of 12 dramatic monologues written for BBC television in the 1980s and 1990s. The monologues have been performed on BBC radio and as live theater in both the UK and US.

Cast: 1 female

What people say:

"Diamond cut monologues ... Several ... instantly became cult classics ... Mr. Bennett's work is too seldom seen on these shores." — The New York Times

"A touching and very funny playwright, Bennett manages to combine the satiric, cold eyed sharpness of Flaubert with an embracing human compassion." — The New York Post

About the Playwright:

Alan Bennett has been one of England's leading dramatists since the success of Beyond the Fringe in the 1960s. Now regarded as perhaps the premier English dramatist of his generation, he has written ten stage plays, three screenplays, eight television documentaries, and over thirty plays for television. His work focuses on the everyday and the mundane; on people with typically British characteristics and obsessions. He has won multiple awards for all aspects of his work including his writing and acting and has declined both a CBE and a knighthood.