Allegra at a glance

Show
Allegra
Status
Harold Pinter Theatre run closed 8 August 2026
Theatre
Harold Pinter Theatre, 6 Panton Street, London SW1Y 4DN
Run
8 July – 8 August 2026; final performance was the production's 100th
Origin
UK tour, spring 2026 — including High Wycombe, Aberdeen, Malvern, Richmond, Windsor, Glasgow and Bath
Genre
Comedy with music
Running time
2 hours 10 minutes, including one interval
Age guidance
12+ (no under-3s admitted)
Writer
Peter Quilter (End of the Rainbow, Glorious!)
Director and choreographer
Stephen Mear
Cast
Dame Maureen Lipman (Allegra), John Middleton (Ronen), Elizabeth Bower (Anna), Bailey Patrick (Officer Rogers)
Covers
Helen Goldwyn (Allegra, Anna), Gareth Radcliffe (Ronen, Officer Rogers)
Set and costume
Justin Williams
Lighting
Sam Biondolillo
Sound
Russell Ditchfield
Video
Ben Bull
Music director
Livi Van Warmelo
Orchestrator
Paul Schofield
Producers
Thomas Hopkins Productions, SAMS Entertainment, Melissa & Bradford Coolidge, Trunfio McGill
Next at this venue
The Cherry Orchard, with Kristin Scott Thomas, from 3 October 2026 (following Abigail's Party, 12 August – 19 September)

Looking back: Allegra at the Harold Pinter

3.0
★★★

LTH Retrospective Rating

Retrospective by the London Theatre Hub editorial team. Last updated: 22 September 2026.

The Verdict

Allegra closed at the Harold Pinter Theatre on 8 August 2026, its 100th performance once the spring tour is counted. Peter Quilter — whose End of the Rainbow gave Tracie Bennett a Judy Garland and whose Glorious! gave Maureen Lipman a Florence Foster Jenkins twenty years ago — wrote her another woman who sings when she shouldn't: an eccentric in a small community who breaks into song in the street, at the shops, at the police station, until the neighbours complain and an officer is sent round. Under it sits an argument about medicating away the awkward elderly. Stephen Mear directed and choreographed; Justin Williams designed; the songs were arranged by Paul Schofield with Livi Van Warmelo as music director.

The reviews divided cleanly between the performance and the play. The Financial Times, at three stars, found Lipman "deftly pitched between comedy and pathos"; WhatsOnStage, also three, said she "bursts with irrepressible joy." Then the two-star notices: The Telegraph — "not even Maureen Lipman can salvage" it; The Times — "even she can't redeem this weirdly lacklustre new comedy"; The Guardian — she "presents like one of Alan Bennett's lovable, spirited eccentrics, but we learn nothing." LondonTheatre called it "a bizarre play that dresses up a societal broadside within the broadest possible whimsy." Nobody gave it four. Everybody gave her the evening.

What Made It Notable

  • Maureen Lipman at 80. A West End lead role, with singing and Mear's choreography, in her ninth decade — the reason the production existed and the reason to have seen it.
  • A Quilter–Lipman reunion. Glorious! at the Duchess in 2005 was one of Lipman's biggest hits; Allegra was a deliberate attempt to repeat it, and the reviews measured it against that.
  • Tour first, West End second. A commercial model more usual for musicals — build the show on the road, bring it to town for a short run — that here delivered exactly 100 performances.
  • The subject. Under the whimsy, a play about what communities do with old people who refuse to be quiet, and about pills as a substitute for patience.
  • An honest gap. Three stars for her, two for the play, from almost every critic who saw it — a rare case of the press agreeing exactly where the problem was.

Everything You Need to Know

What happens in Allegra?

Allegra is an older woman living alone in a small community, and she sings. Not for an audience and not on cue: she bursts into song in the street, in shops, in the middle of conversations, whenever the feeling arrives. Most of her neighbours find it charming for about a week.

The complaints

Then the complaints start. A neighbour, Ronen, and a younger woman, Anna, are drawn into her orbit from different directions — one exasperated, one protective — and eventually the community calls the police. Officer Rogers is sent to have a word, and finds having a word with Allegra harder than expected.

The question

The second act turns to what should be done about her. The options on the table are the ones societies usually reach for with the inconveniently old — a quiet word, a doctor, a prescription — and the play's argument, made mostly through Lipman's refusal to stop singing, is that a person who is happy and harmless does not need to be cured of it.

This production

Directed and choreographed by Stephen Mear, with set and costumes by Justin Williams, lighting by Sam Biondolillo, sound by Russell Ditchfield and video by Ben Bull. Livi Van Warmelo was music director and Paul Schofield orchestrated. Two hours ten minutes including an interval; age guidance 12+.