Shrapnel at the Arcola works for the slayers, not the slain

Quite a hit factory these days, the Hampstead Theatre. The latest candidate for West End glory is Hugh Whitemore’s bio-drama about Stevie Smith. Not an obvious choice. The script, from the 1970s, recreates the atmosphere of Stevie’s life with effortless accuracy. Her vocabulary, her taste in clothes, her habits of thought and expression appear by magic as if drawn from the evidence of intimate friends. Yet Whitemore never met his subject. Zoë Wanamaker plays her as an adorable suburban eccentric, whose razor-sharp intellect peeps out from behind a façade of emerald pinafores and sherry decanters.

Stevie (Florence Margaret Smith) was born in Hull in 1902 and lived nearly all her life in Palmers Green. Aged eight she realised that death was a servant whom she could summon at will. This proved such a consolation to her childhood that she later insisted suicide should appear on the primary school syllabus. She worked as a secretary for an indulgent City gent who allowed her to write novels on office stationery in company time.