For years, seventies plays were too close to be termed ‘period pieces’ and too far away to be contemporary drama. It is true that Habeas Corpus has more of a flavour of the sixties about it and, indeed, some things would be ‘realer’ if it were put back ten years. In fact, there are different, but just as many, illogicalities when one sets it in either decade; the fact is that disbelief must be suspended to allow the gags to mount up.

Nowadays, references to ‘the permissive society’ (the term used in the sixties to denote the increasingly tolerant and liberal attitudes to sex), to Kenneth Clark’s television series Civilisation (which traced the thread of human achievement from the fall of Rome to the birth of evolutionary theory) and to the old time movie stars, Jayne Mansfield and Dame Anna Neagle might leave some of our younger members somewhat mystified. However, as a period piece, we can undo our corsets a little and have a good old laugh at the bawdy, strictly un-PC, seaside postcard humour.

Although it is a comedy (and an extremely funny one), it is tinged with the bathos that Bennett is famous for. The Wicksteeds and their unfortunate acquaintances are almost all dropping apart in some way. Muriel says, "We’re all of us pretty well headed for the sere and yellow. It’s time’s hurrying footsteps all round these days, isn’t it?" Further to this, the characters are almost all selfish, obsessed and, as in the best comedy, cruel to each other. Wicksteed himself is a monster: he has a complete lack of regard for his wife, his son, his patients and abuses his "position as their trusty old physician" with impunity. Sir Percy, president of the BMA, is not much better, Muriel’s desperate search for love is frightening to see . Only Amelia Swabb, the fairy godmother/domestic help can "take the wider view." Why the Wicksteeds put up with her recalcitrance is a mystery but it’s fortunate Bennett decided they do: she’s a choice creation and one he evidently had enormous fun with (he played the part himself, replacing Patricia Hayes in the original cast at the Lyric Theatre). Whilst acknowledging these darker elements lurking beneath the surface, we haven’t tried to find an overt message beyond the indisputable fact that we’re all getting older and, as Bennett once said, "I think most people look back and feel their lives should have been much more full of sex."