Richard E Grant plays Simon Hench, a sophisticated, urbane and selfish publisher who wants nothing more than to go home to his luxuriant abode and listen to his new recording of Wagner’s Parsifal. Like all good egocentric publishers, he tries to keep his family and friends at arms length. They, on the other hand, have other ideas, and turn up one by one as Hench’s life finally catches up with him.

Richard E Grant has made his name playing oddball characters on film; out of work actor Withnail in Withnail And I, advertising executive with a talking boil Denis Dinbleby Bagley in How To Get Ahead In Advertising and asylum-running vampire-hater Dr Seward in Bram Stoker’s Dracula. On stage, his credits include The Importance Of Being Earnest, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Play What I Wrote.

Simon Gray, who was awarded the CBE for services to literature earlier this year, has over 30 plays in his canon of work, including Quartermaine’s Terms, Butley, The Late Middle Classes, Cell Mates, The Old Masters and Japes.