The Madness of George III, Apollo Theatre, review If you have tears, prepare to shed them now. Alan Bennett's wonderful play has finally arrived in the West End after great success last year in Bath and on tour, and there are many moments that cut at the heart like a knife. We think of Bennett as a great comic writer, and so he is, but he can also be the most moving of dramatists. It is the terrible suffering of George III, a brisk, decent, and, unexpectedly lovable monarch who loses his mind and suffers so dreadfully at the hands of his doctors that makes the most powerful impact. Twenty years ago the great, much missed Nigel Hawthorne scored one of the greatest successes of his career in the role of Bennett's King George III. It seemed an impossible act to follow, but David Haig proves every inch Hawthorne's equal in a performance of extraordinary emotion, tenderness and humour. This is one of those rare and thrilling evenings when a very good actor suddenly moves up a gear into indisputable greatness. In the early scenes, Haig marvellously captures the wit, the impatience and the eccentric likeability of the monarch, who peppers his conversation with an impatient "what, what?"and is touchingly devoted to his plain, fat wife, played with a lovely humanity and humour by Beatie Edney. But then his wits begin to turn and he suffers physical and mental agonies, greatly exacerbated by the doctors who bleed, purge, blister and bind him in scenes that are almost unbearable to behold. Even in these dark scenes there are moments of black comedy, beautifully caught by Haig, as his language turns scatological and he develops a disastrous crush on a lady in waiting. But there is also a genuinely tragic depth as Haig depicts a proud man reduced to falsetto shrieks of pain and terror, and pitiful prayers to God to release him from his torment. At these moments the actor holds nothing back. You feel you should avert your gaze from such misery, but the performance is so compelling that you can't. The play isn't perfect. The complex political background never comes fully to life, though there is a delicious comic turn from Christopher Keegan as an obese and odious Prince of Wales; and the happy ending ducks the fact that George III's madness would eventually return. But Christopher Luscombe's elegant, lucid, and deeply felt production grips throughout and Haig is simply magnificent, both in his madness and his deeply moving recovery.