The late playwright Simon Gray was to smoking, what dipsomaniac columnist Jeffrey Bernard was to alcohol. The former, forever ‘unwell’ at the hands of demon drink; the latter, a human chimney who had smoked ‘60 a day for 50 years’ and later enumerated his impending demise with the assiduity of a librarian addressing posterity. The celebration of excess in their respective literary oeuvres seems to me peculiarly English: honest, even self-deprecating; yet hell-bent in a hand-cart of their own volition.
     The Last Cigarette was adapted into a play from The Smoking Diaries and Coda (Gray’s autobiographical journals and reminiscences) with friend and fellow writer Hugh Whitemore, in six weeks. Gray had already been diagnosed with lung-cancer and the result is a painfully entertaining exercise in gallows humour. As an antidote to the PC brigade, it can be a joy: but scratch the surface, and beneath the ironic monomania, self-pity seeping from the relentless soliloquies makes uncomfortable viewing.
     The work is a three-hander, utilising the neat conceit that Nicholas le Prevost, Jasper Britton and Felicity Kendal embody aspects of one person – voices in the head of the protagonist, to all intents and purposes – and this happy dilution of the play’s inherent solipsism works brilliantly. The talented trio rattle through their dialogue (if one may call it that) at a blistering pace. Lesser artists might struggle with the stream-of-consciousness onanism, but they positively revel in it. The intimate confines of the Trafalgar Studios are perfectly suited to this sort of high-energy performance, all-embracing the small audience a mere few feet away. No skeleton in the addict’s attic is too sacred - bisexuality, adultery and self-destruction – all rear their ugly heads. The ghastly diminution of a life (attended by tests, hospitals, doctors and operations) for which Gray had only himself to blame, is examined in forensic detail. The ‘pleasures of the smoke’ betake a cautionary tale in this bitter-sweet dramatisation.
     However amphetamine-sped its lines may be, The Last Cigarette does not require two acts. When, at the end of the first half, the cast reprise their opening exchanges, one anticipates an elegant conclusion. Unexpectedly after the interval, it revisits medics and medication, and further digresses with reveries of holidays and hobbies. Minor details also rankle – a couple of stereotypical racial allusions surprise; while the inevitable and frantic puffing of unlit cigarettes appears bicycle-shed ingénue for the business at hand. As for its grand design, this self-reverential play is clever, but not nearly as clever as it thinks. However, it is still curiously moving; and if the unsettling combination of comedy and tragedy piques your curiosity – see for yourself which triumphs.
Caroline Kellett Fraysse