Pheter Whelan is proving himself master of the "what-if?" school of playwrights

Edward Bond's speculated movingly about Shakespeare's last days and his relationships with his daughter Judith: Peter Whelan's new play "The Herbal Bed" is set at almost exactly teh same time but brings into the spotlight the playwright's elder daughter Susanna, and her husband John Hall, a Stratford physician. The Halls were a well-to-do couple with considerable standing in the town, physicians being the "consultants" of the Elizabethan medical system, so any scandal attaching their name was in itself a serious matter. John Hall was also something of a Puritan, on record as having supported calls for firm discipline in church matters. In 1611 one Jack Lane publicly accused Susanna of adultery with Rafe Smith, a Stratford haberdasher and family friend, and Susanna retaliated with a charge of defamation against Lane which was heard in the diocesan court at Worcester Cathedral. These are facts, documented in court archives, but on these meagre bare bones Peter Whelan has fleshed out a compelling story of conflicting loyalties and moral dilemmas that takes teh play way beyond any kind of "heritage drama". In "The Herbal Bed", Dr. Hall is a stern man of unimpeachable character, dedicated to his profession, a caring but distant husband; Susanna is a passionate and intelligent woman, devoted to her husband but chafing at the limitations both of her marriage and of her status in a society where the professions are closed to a woman; Rafe Smith, trapped in an arid marriage, is tormented by his long-cherished love for Susanna; Lane is a hotheaded trouble-causer with imagined scores to settle, foolish but relatively harmless - until he sparks off this sequence of events. It's an engrossing story, with a truly cliff-hanging climax - and after you've seen it, you can walk round the corner from The Other Place and see where it all happened, the family home at Hall's Croft.