Tim Pigott-Smith | ChicanePictures

Mike Barlett’s audacious new play King Charles III had its World Premiere at London’s Almeida Theatre in April this year (2014). It transferred to the Wyndham’s Theatre in the West End last week.

Helmed by Almeida’s Artistic Director Rupert Goold, it featured veteran actor Tim Pigott-Smith as Prince Charles who ascends the throne after his mother dies. The play centres on the pressures and purposes of the monarchy today.

It’s the first major play written in blank verse that the West End has seen for a very long time. The playwright wrote in iambic pentameter (the meter used by the Bard when writing verse, having ten syllables in each line – five pairs of alternating unstressed and stressed syllables) because he wanted the play to be a Shakespearean drama; a family epic in five acts, complete with a ghost and a comic subplot.

The smash hit received glowing reviews. The Telegraph states, “attendance is compulsory”. Michael Billington said “Tim Pigott-Smith gives the performance of his distinguished career”. Its original three month booking has been extended already.

The world premiere production of Lucy Prebble’s celebrated play Enron sold out its entire run at the Minerva Theatre Chichester and all of its tickets before opening its six week run at the Royal Court. It transferred to the Noel Coward Theatre in January 2010. Directed by Rupert Goold, the cast featured Samuel West, Amanda Drew, Tim Pigott-Smith and Tom Goodman-Hill.

Enron was inspired by one of the most famous scandals in financial history, reviewing the tumultuous 1990s and casting a new light on the fiscal turmoil in which the world currently finds itself. Its tagline: A true story of false profits.

Despite its commercial and critical success, Enron lasted just over a month on Broadway at the Broadhunt Theatre in the Summer of 2010. A ‘hostile’ review by The New York Times critic Ben Brantley is thought to have contributed to the premature clsoure. As the Guardian’s Michael Billington pointed out, “no serious play on Broadway can survive a withering attack from The New York Times, which carries the force of a papal indictment”. It did pick up a Tony nomination for Original Score.

The four leads all signed my sketch at the Noël Coward stage door on 8 May 2010.