In theatrical terms it was something of a seismic event.
None of us present at this eagerly awaited evening were in any doubt that the play we were watching boasted the world's best cast. Dame Judi Dench and Dame Maggie Smith in a clash of the thespian titans - joint first ladies of the stage. Wise perhaps not to pollute this rarefied atmosphere with any bit part players. But as if that was not enough, there was more. Add another West End superstar to the mix - playwright extraordinaire David Hare's new offering, The Breath of Life.
Who emerged from this heady mixture at the head of the masterclass? Well, the Oscar-winning dames get equally high marks. As for for Mr Hare, this is not his best. Judi and Maggie's consummate skills saved a work that often bordered on the ordinary. The play features two women at the wrong end of middle-age discussing a man called Martin, whose favours they shared for 25 years.
It's all highly emotive stuff as Frances (Dench) confronts Madeleine over her long affair with her husband. Their heartfelt stories come spilling out with Madeleine recalling her first meeting with Martin during the revolutionary sixties. They slept together, only for her to walk out fearing that their relationship "might turn out less than I hoped".
At 60 and living alone on the Isle of Wight, her counter-culture fervour has waned. She recalls her earnest youth as an era in which "we left no loft unconverted".
She remembers how 15 years after their brief encounter she met Martin again and they embarked on the kind of less than perfect compromise she had always dreaded. Frances has traveled to Ventnor to find "closure" with the woman Martin kept secret for a quarter of a century. The visitor is furious that, as Martin's wife and the mother of his children, she was reduced to a side show in his self-centered life. And in the end - irony of ironies - he left them both and moved to America with a nubile young model.
Watching the Dames putting each other through their paces was at times thrilling. And, characteristically, Hare's dialogue was sometimes cracklingly clever and funny. Madeleine describes the South Coast as a place where people come to garden and expire. All amusing stuff, but I couldn't help feeling that there was something of the "so what" about this whole exercise. Frankly, Martin sounded like a jerk. God knows what two intelligent, mature women were getting so worked up about.
Does this play teach us anything about relationships? Who cares.
In Madeleine's tastefully decorated seafront apartment the exchange between former rivals in love unfolds in a dramatic setting. So much so that Madeleine urges Frances - a popular novelist - to include their little meeting in her next book.
These two superstars didn't disappoint. But at times the material did. It was perfunctory and you wonder how The Breath of Life will fair [sic] in the hands of lesser mortals.
Still ... there ain't nothing like two Dames!
Thanks to Phil Watson for sending article which appeared in the Daily Mirror on October 16, 2002.