Two old stagers find vigour in Brief Lives

In a soulless, drafty rehearsal hall just around the corner from Euston Station, Roy Dotrice is doing a reading as John Aubrey under the watchful eye of the director Patrick Garland. The bitchy 17th-century writer and antiquarian is a character that both men have come to know very well over years.

The relationship began in 1967 when Brief Lives — Garland’s adaptation of The Memoirs, Miscellanies, Letters and Jottings of John Aubrey — was first staged at the Hampstead Theatre. On the West End, Broadway and around the world, Dotrice went on to play Aubrey for more than 1,700 performances which still warrants a mention in the Guinness Book of Records as the longest-running one-man show. Now these two old stagers — Garland is 72 and Dotrice is, unbelievably, 84 — are about to reprise the play with a run that will open at the Mercury Theatre in Colchester on 7 February and end, they hope, in the West End.