ALAN Bennett fans will flock to see this week's main house attraction at Malvern Theatres - for his 1999 hit, The Lady and the Van, features not one, but two, characterisations of the writer himself.

And as a two-hour piece of theatre, it's a joy.

Susan Hampshire is quite wonderful as the anti-hero, Miss Shepherd.

All that experience of taffeta and grace does not go to waste, as her character is as educated as the writer whose garden she inhabits in her dilapidated Bedford van.

A real-life inhabitant of Bennett's garden for 15 years, the relationship between the author and the hobo makes a perfect canvas for Britain's most-loved literary figure.

Within it he explores our tolerance with the unknown, our capacity for compassion and the writer's own regard for his deliverance of real life, and his envy of others' capacity to live it.

It took Bennett a decade to decipher how he could best work the eloquent Miss Shepherd out of his head and on to the page.

Surprisingly for a highly private man, he chose to make the tale autobiographical: the dichotomy of Bennett's own character giving us an even deeper insight into the septuagenarian's person.

David Holt and Paul Digley (as Bennett) are both excellent in the subtle delivery of this highly comedic piece.

Deborah Maclaren commands easy laughs as the stereotypical social worker; and Tim Wallers/Victoria Carling as the annoyingly smug-neighbours Rufus and Pauline display a great range of 70s clothing along with nave wit.

Not to be underestimated.