It’s rare enough for a new play by a debut playwright to reach the West End, but comedian and actor Nigel Planer’s first play On the Ceiling, which only opened last Monday at the Garrick, has just announced that it is already pulling the plug and has given notice that it will quit the Garrick on October 1. No doubt an unsupportive critical press will be blamed – reviews were of the one and two star order – but really, having given it a trial run in Birmingham in May, the producers only have themselves to blame: they knew what they had, and if they thought this was good enough to serve on a West End public, then they deserve what they got.
It does no one – not actors, writers or audiences – any favours to promote substandard fare, however warmly we wish to welcome the playwright; when I interviewed him last month, however, he told me that he was already at work on his next play. “I’ve just finished the second draft of a second play. It was important to get the new one written before On the Ceiling opens, because if it’s a disaster I might not have had the courage to do it again, and if it’s a success, I might have felt inhibited, too,” he told me. Sadly for him, he was right on the first score.
