Two of British theatre’s most formidable talents share a park bench, two dogs, and a quiet revolution. Ben Weatherill’s Frank and Percy arrived at The Other Palace in September 2023 following a world premiere at Theatre Royal Windsor, bringing together Sir Ian McKellen and three-time Olivier Award winner Roger Allam for a two-hander that trades Shakespearean bombast for the small, devastating details of late-life companionship.
The Play
Frank and Percy opens on Hampstead Heath, where retired history teacher Frank (Allam) and university academic Percy (McKellen) cross paths while walking their dogs – Toffee and Bruno. Their initial exchanges cover weather and canine breeds. Over twenty-two scenes spanning several years, those surface conversations deepen into something more dangerous: intimacy.
Frank is a widower still grieving his wife Alice, dead from cancer four years prior. Percy is a separated academic whose long relationship with a man named Dennis ended a decade ago when he changed the locks. Both men are from Yorkshire – Frank from Pontefract, Percy from Whitby – and both are profoundly lonely.
The play’s central tension arrives when Percy reveals his homosexuality, and Frank admits to previous same-sex attraction. What follows is not a coming-out narrative but an examination of two men discovering that identity can shift even in its seventh decade. As Weatherill told the Bush Theatre: his writing specialises in “unforgettable characters, that make you laugh before the tears prick at the back of your eyes.”
Weatherill’s Track Record
Ben Weatherill earned his reputation with Chicken Dust at the Finborough Theatre and Curve Theatre Leicester, followed by Jellyfish – about a young woman with Down’s Syndrome falling in love – which transferred from the Bush Theatre to the National Theatre’s Dorfman in 2019. The Writers’ Guild shortlisted Jellyfish for Best Play, and The Stage listed it among the year’s best. For Frank and Percy, Weatherill received a Sky Arts Award nomination in the Times Breakthrough Artist category.
Ian McKellen: Beyond Gandalf
McKellen’s career spans seven decades and two Academy Award nominations – for Gods and Monsters (1998) and The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001). His Gandalf across Peter Jackson’s trilogies and Erik Lehnsherr/Magneto in the X-Men films made him globally recognisable. On stage, he has performed Shakespeare in over twenty major productions. He won the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play for Amadeus (1981) and six Olivier Awards, most recently for Ian McKellen on Stage: With Tolkien, Shakespeare, Others and YOU (2020).
His relationship with director Sean Mathias – who helms Frank and Percy – stretches back decades. They last collaborated with Allam in 2004, when all three worked on Aladdin at the Old Vic.
Roger Allam: The Stage Purist
Allam originated Inspector Javert in the original London production of Les Misérables at the Barbican in 1985. Arthur Miller himself noted in Timebends (1987) that Allam abandoned the role – over sixty performances – to appear in Miller’s The Archbishop’s Ceiling with the RSC.
His three Olivier Awards recognise his range: Best Supporting Actor for Money at the National Theatre (1999), Best Actor for Privates on Parade at the Donmar Warehouse (2002), and Best Actor again for Falstaff in Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2 at Shakespeare’s Globe (2011). On television, he played Peter Mannion MP in The Thick of It (2007-2012), Illyrio Mopatis in Game of Thrones (2011), and DI Fred Thursday in Endeavour for eight series. He is an associate artist of the Royal Shakespeare Company.
The Venue
The Other Palace sits at 12 Palace Street, Victoria – a five-minute walk from Buckingham Palace. The site began as Charlotte Chapel in 1766, became the Westminster Theatre in 1931, and was destroyed by fire in 2002. The current building, designed by Foster Wilson Architects as the first newly built theatre complex in central London for thirty years, opened in September 2012. Andrew Lloyd Webber acquired it in 2016, renaming it The Other Palace. Bill Kenwright purchased the theatre in October 2021, and his production of Frank and Percy launched a new writing development fund: 50p from each ticket on future main house productions supports emerging playwrights.
Critical Response
The Independent praised McKellen’s “wonderfully arch flourish” while noting Allam’s “more naturalistic performance has a compelling solidity.” London Theatre awarded four stars, describing the pair’s “self-evident pleasure in being in one another’s presence.” Time Out called it “a cracking play” where “the venerable duo’s big, end-of-first-act snog feels quietly radical.” The New European labelled them “one of the great stage double acts.” The British Theatre Guide observed that while “it isn’t a play of great moment,” it is “a production that their admirers wouldn’t want to miss.”
Why It Matters
The pairing represents a tradition of British stage acting that prizes versatility above celebrity. Both have pursued screen careers while maintaining unwavering commitment to live theatre. Frank and Percy offers something rare: a love story between two older men that is neither tragic nor didactic but a comedy about loneliness, grief, and the difficulty of changing one’s habits after decades of solitude. As Paul Taylor-Mills, artistic director at The Other Palace, put it: “Between Ian and Roger, they represent the breadth and range of British theatre, demonstrating why London is the heart of the theatrical world.”
The production ran from 8 September to 17 December 2023, extended due to demand.
For more on new writing in London, see our guide to [the best new plays in London this season]. To read about Roger Allam’s career, visit his [official website].
