Sap

I think it was called "Sap". It was a play by Gwyn Thomas at Cardiff's Sherman Theatre put on by The Welsh Theatre Company which was then going quite strong but later just disappeared (they always do!).
A young woman who was attached to The Welsh Company - I think she must have been Assistant to the Assistant Secretary or some such thing, was flapping around saying "Has he arrived yet? Is he here?" "Who?" I asked. "Gwyn Thomas?" "No," she said dismissively as if I had said something vile. ""Not him. Bernard Levin. He's down from London and is going to review the play."
Eventually, just before curtain up, the great man arrived. No, not Gwyn Thomas but Bernard Levin.
"He's here," she said. "He's here. Bernard Levin's here."
He didn't appear to want it to be known that he was here; he ignored everyone and sat at the back of the auditorium, didn't speak to anyone in the interval and left suddenly at the end.
I was standing at the bar (as per usual) at the end of the performance of the play and the girl was still flapping around around saying things like "I wonder if he liked it. I wonder if he'll give it a good review."
Then I noticed a door open. A rather heavy door. The man opening it had difficulty in pushing it open. It was Gwyn Thomas on his own. No one spoke to him. He walked across the foyer and out of the front door on his own.
Bernard Levin gave the play a rave review in The Sunday Times. The theatre, he said, is alive and well in Wales.
I can imagine that Assistant to the Assistant to the Secretary gushing with excitement when she read the review.
The review was over the top. I suspect that Levin had decided what he was going to say before he even arrived in Cardiff. He was, at the time, at logger heads with London theatrical productions and, I suspect, was going to show them up for what trivial things they were doing.
Because the play was not very good. But I too gave it a goodish review. Could I do otherwise after I had seen the great man leaving the theatre on his own, no one giving a damn about him.
Me and Bernard Levin, sentimentalists together!