IT’S almost three decades since Alan Bennett’s bittersweet and inherently confessional monologues first saw the light of day.

Nevertheless, their brilliance is most certainly not dimmed by the passage of the years, a fact that was ably demonstrated at Malvern this week.

The underlying tragedy that colours all three of these finely honed pieces of observation is never far from the surface.

The characters are all damaged in some way and that is the key factor which resonates throughout.

Stephanie Cole as Doris in A Cream Cracker under the Settee is utterly magnificent, whether referring to the slut of a cleaner who doesn’t do her job properly, or commenting on the distinctive aromas emanating from Stafford House old people’s home.

There is indeed a kind of savagery at work here, albeit softened by the humour of grim resignation and a thinly disguised weariness of life and the fate that await us all.

Siobhan Redmond’s Miss Ruddock in Lady of Letters presses plenty of buttons as far as this reviewer is concerned. She is a fully paid-up member of that all-too familiar breed of ‘correspondents’, the people who are seemingly compelled to write to all and sundry complaining about every mortal thing under the sun.

Councils, newspapers, the department running the local crematorium, even Buckingham Palace… all must be subjected to her whining, turgid prose. Oh yes, been there and got a whole load of the T-shirts with that one, thank you.

Mind you, I was so pleased to see her end up in jail after going too far with one outburst. A case of let that be a lesson, perhaps?

A Chip in the Sugar features Karl Theobald as Graham, a middle-aged man still living with his mother and has never married. You could say that all goes to form a bit of a clue.

He’s riddled with doubts and paranoia – there’s a man outside watching him, he claims – and has an Oedipus complex that’s through the roof.

Graham’s grubbiness oozes from every stitch in those unfeasibly awful pyjamas of his… you can almost feel the oppressiveness of that dank cell of a bedroom he calls home.

Talking Heads has lost none of its original energy, being both amusing and vaguely shocking at the same time. It runs until Saturday (August 29) and is well worth seeing.