An enjoyable play that centres on the great theatre that came from the contrast between Henry Irving and Ellen Terry

“For you the theatre is everything, for me it is nothing,” Ellen Terry tells Henry Irving in David Hare’s play Grace Pervades. She and Irving were the greatest actors of their generation, and it’s impossible to believe that the theatre was nothing to her. It was her life. As it was his. But for him nothing else much mattered, including his wife and son. The play tells the story of Irving and Terry, who worked together for 20 years at the Lyceum Theatre, and the contrast between them was at the heart of their success. He was gloom, she was joy. He was dark, she was light. He was tragedy, she was comedy. “The audience wants tragedy because life is hard and bitter,” he said (not those exact words). “They know that already,” she answered, “they want comedy to lighten it” (again not those exact words). The line elicited as a laugh, as did “Tragedy for the East Midlands, comedy for the West Midlands.” Or was it the other way round? The scenes between Irving, played by Ralph Fiennes (63),…