Anyone watching this? Dramatically it must be one of the slowest-moving, badly structured plays I've seen in ages. On top of that, there's the tiresome casting that seems intent on pretending that a deeply racist and sexist period wasn't at all racist or sexist. Is that supposed to be progressive? One group today seems determined to damn the past for its injustices, while another appears to want to airbrush such injustices away. What about just being accurate and allowing people to assess historical periods with a degree of honesty?

Aside from anything else, it's simply not good drama if the casting distracts you from becoming absorbed in the story. If you spend the first hour thinking 'He wouldn't have been in that position,' 'She wouldn't have married him,' 'She wouldn't have been the companion of her,' then you've wrecked your own bid to engage the audience. Really amateurish stuff.