Bingo, at Young Vic, Seven magazine review It is difficult, for sure, to reconcile this rather colourless old man and his petty preoccupations with the greatest, and most profound, writer ever to put quill to paper. Happily, things pick up in the second act with the arrival of Richard McCabe's corpulent Ben Jonson. He reckons his old rival has lost sight of his quality control - "I mean, what was The Winter's Tale all about?" he inquires - and, in his cups, he laments his own lot in life. "My father died before I was born," he tells Shakespeare. He was that desperate to avoid me. McCabe's is a great comic tour-de-force which lifts, albeit all too briefly, Angus Jackson's rather workmanlike production on to a higher plane. I don't mean to belittle Sir Patrick, however, who makes the best of what is a rather unappealing part. Why the actor was so eager to see this particular play revived I have no idea. As Bond has fashioned his role, it is little more than a vehicle for a rather minor writer to attempt to score points against an incomparably greater one. "Was anything done?" is all Shakespeare seems to say at the end. If ever anyone could say that actually quite a lot was done, it was, of course, Shakespeare. Still, it is always a pleasure to see Sir Patrick's remarkable head. What a great performance there is to be out of it yet, albeit posthumously, as Yorick. Young Vic, to March 31; www.youngvic.org