Send a thief to catch a thief, so the saying goes and The Sunday Times was thinking along these lines when they dispatched Lady Caroline Blackwood to bag an exclusive with the ailing Duchess of Windsor.
Neither was immune from scandal or indulgent living, both had a reputation for hypnotising their men and both were "difficult women".
However, the Duchess's French gatekeeper Suzanne Blum proved a match from them both. She was a formidable lawyer, an unreconstructed snob and a loyal guardian of the myth of the Duchess who was, according to Blum, gaily enjoying her autumn years. According to everyone else, she was dying a lonely and painful death.
It is this negotiating for access that became the subject of Blackwood's book and the meat of this play.
Blackwood, denied the Duchess, begins to suspect Blum's motives are less than benign. Blum is assured this is the case with the unruly Blackwood.
Nicholas Wright's script initially feels limited by the truth of a missed scoop. There is a slightness in the encounter between the brazen lady and the starchy octogenarian and the swift first act feels like the job is mostly done.
But the cleverness of the piece is the exploration of wider themes and the cat-and-mouse mind games of the protagonists.
The relish with which the two consummate actresses flatter and betray is a pleasure and, under Richard Eyre's direction, as neat and reckless as a a whirlwind in a jam jar.
Voddie-necking Anna Chancellor straddles the faultline between feisty foe and dissolute wreck with impeccable balance while Sheila Hancock, pictured, makes, then breaks, the formidable French façade of Blum with a precision tooled ice pick.
In between times we have Blum's fey assistant Michael Bloch who turns a cypher into a deft and intelligent comic turn and Angela Thorne as the unrepentant Lady Mosley turning a deaf ear by force rather than by choice (as she had done at the height of her despicable political life).
– From October 2011
