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Theatre

London’s cabbies hail their leading lady, Maureen Lipman

Maureen Lipman is all set to direct The Knowledge, her late husband Jack Rosenthal's classic play about London's cabbie trade. Janet Gordon met her in a cabbies' cafe

August 24, 2017 09:35
Maureen Lipman
3 min read

Driving a London cab has long been a tradition in Jewish families — a legacy passed from grandfather to father to son and sometimes daughter (although 90 per cent of cabbies are men). So the news that Maureen Lipman is directing the stage premiere of her late husband Jack Rosenthal’s 1979 tour de force television play The Knowledge at the Charing Cross Theatre has been greeted with an enormous roar of affection for a lady that the London cab trade think of as one of their own.

It’s been 13 years since her husband died. Lipman is now “thrilled, excited and full of trepidation” about reviving this iconic play which follows four Londoners as they attempt the fearsome “Knowledge” — the process of becoming a London black-cab driver.

Lipman is a self-confessed black-cab nut who still remembers occasions when she came home to find Rosenthal playing host to a random assortment of cab drivers in his quest for absolute authenticity and perfection. Did he achieve it? Just stop any cabbie and ask. They will instantly recall the way in which Rosenthal captured the very essence of The Knowledge with an examiner nicknamed “The Vampire” for his exacting standards and heavy irony.

The idea to bring the play to the stage came from Vaughan Williams, chairman of the Charing Cross Theatre, a prolific black-cab user who lives just a few metres from Gibson Square, destination of the very first run on the very first page of The Knowledge’s essential Blue Book. Having got Lipman’s approval, two years later — with the script adapted by Simon Block— she accepted an invitation from Williams and his co-producer Steven M Levy to direct the show.