Rita Tushingham

Why, 60 years on, Spike Milligan's Bed Sitting Room is as relevant as ever

Spike Milligan's post-apocalyptic dark comedy The Bed Sitting Room has not been performed on stage for almost 40 years. Now, ahead of a rehearsed reading of the script that the former Goon wrote with John Antrobus, producer John Hewer recalls what drew him to the project...

John Hewer, Chortle, 13th June 2022

This is scarcely a trace of a story-line, hence all the gags and lunatic gooneries are without dramatic connection, and situation comedy cannot survive without a plot to supply the situations. The gallery of character can hardly be said to interact with one another; in many cases they exist solely in terms of a single outlandish idea or costume, with little else in the way of discernible personality. In this situation the natural comics Spike Milligan, Harry Secombe, Marty Feldman - thrive; the the others however - in particular Michael Hordren, Rita Tushingham and Ralph Richardson - are quite unable to sustain the interest which their predominant postition in the film demands.

Russell Cambell, Monthly Film Review, 31st March 1970