Beryl Cook: A Private View ★★★★

Many people  will be familiar with the work of Beryl Cook. Prints of her paintings – which feature joyful and slightly cartoonish portrayals of ordinary people going about, and usually enjoying, their everyday lives – frequently adorned the walls of UK homes throughout the 1970s/80s and beyond. Yet, whilst her artwork is instantly recognisable, Cook’s private life remains largely enigmatic. In her fifth play about a painter, Kara Wilson has worked with the artist’s family to lift the curtain on this intriguing figure, offering a rare glimpse of the person behind the canvas.

Cleverly set in Cook’s studio as she completes Ladies Night – one of her most famous, and typically saucy works – whilst the process is also being recorded for BBC television, the dramatic premise of Beryl Cook: A Private View effortlessly allows the ‘painter’ to chat about her journey from housewife and Plymouth B&B landlady to internationally-celebrated artist. The picture builds of a painfully shy and modest individual who realises her artistic skill by accident, only to become obsessed with representing the characters she encounters – the raucous pub revellers and shore leave-hungry sailors – in her home town, and elsewhere, on canvas. And chance also leads to her talent being more widely discovered, first resulting in a local exhibition, but quickly avalanching to solo shows in London, and ultimately her work reaching a mass public through prints and greeting cards.