The Hollow Crown at the Civic Theatre

By PETER CALDER

A reverential silence descended on the Civic before the house lights dimmed. We knew without prompting that royalty was waiting in the wings.

Kings and queens were the business of the evening, a miscellany of pieces by or about English monarchs. But the real royalty was in the performers - four legends of the English stage, Dame Diana Rigg, Sirs Derek Jacobi and Donald Sinden, and Ian Richardson.

This was a night for orotund elocution (in which "were" rhymes with "hair") and terminal vowels of crystalline clarity. It was a pleasure to revel in the execution, even if the act seemed at times antic, foreign and slight.

The performers - their repertoire leavened by Stephen Gray's amusing musical interludes - sat on high-backed chairs and took turns at centre stage, reading from leather-bound folios. The result was an intimate performance, like an after-dinner recital given in the living room, which is itself a habit as remote as many of these stories.

Oddly, perhaps, given the production's provenance (and its title, which comes from Richard II) Shakespeare was not much in evidence. But the sheer variety of the pieces, together with refreshing changes of pace, ensured the two-hour show never dragged.

An essay by a young Jane Austen about the kings and queens had a certain grating charm but Rigg was every inch the realm's first queen, Mary Tudor, and Jacobi as Charles I taunted by a reptilian Richardson as John Bradshaw at his trial for treason achieved a tragic power.

Richardson, too, was a deliciously dissolute William Makepeace Thackeray but the real revelation of the evening was Sinden, who relished his roles, particularly as he chewed and spat James I's famous counterblast to tobacco. A trouper of the old school, Sinden was a generous spectator as well, watching the others' contributions as though seeing them for the first time.

Poorly placed microphones made for a fluctuating, sometimes tinny, sound (and one wondered what need these thespians had of amplification anyway), but the production delivered all it promised: old-fashioned craft deployed masterfully on old-fashioned material.