The play went on in the Theatre Upstairs, and Peter directed it. Taking his cue (I think) from the moment when we’d both been so entranced by the room itself, he cleared it out and brought in beautiful acting, bare walls, white light and open windows. There was a scene where James Hazeldene and Don Hawkins as Dennis and Jeffrey sat in broad daylight on a window sill with the roofs of Westminster behind them: staging like this was (in those days) unheard of.

The show was a great success and, for the first time, I had produced a piece of work I was utterly proud of. And this was what seemed at the time to matter most. It’s odd, looking back on things, how one knew that things were important without knowing why. I had to become a playwright to learn that what was more important than anything else was the play itself.

Nicholas Wright