Despite premiering in the West End with Kenneth Williams and Maggie Smith in the lead roles, it has been 50 years since Peter Shaffer’s two one-act plays were last performed onstage.

And director of this revival, Alastair Whatley, was only introduced to them by accident after trying to obtain the rights for another of Shaffer’s plays – the ingenious farce set during an energy outage, Black Comedy.

“We finished the tour for [Sebastian Faulks’s First World War epic] Birdsong in Brighton and wanted to find something totally different,” says Whatley, who initially picked up on Black Comedy for its clever staging – with the blackout being acted out under full stage lighting, and the scenes where the electricity comes on performed in darkness.

“I had never heard of the two plays until the rights agent suggested them – but when I read them I found they were two little gems. I couldn’t think of an answer as to why they haven’t been seen in 50 years.”

Part of the reason could be their setting in the 1960s just before the decade began to swing – pre-Beatlemania, free love and women’s lib – which now seems a world away.

Whatley resisted the temptation to update the setting of both the plays – despite the fact the second play The Public Eye is set in the relatively timeless location of an accountant’s office.

“The period is so important,” says Whatley. “With good writing you shouldn’t need to update it. Shakespeare’s plays are updated all the time, which can be wonderful, but if you haven’t seen the play before you wouldn’t necessarily want to see a director’s concept of it first. With these two plays 99% of the audience will be discovering them for the first time.”

The period setting particularly works with the first play, The Private Ear, which is set in a bedsit, where a shy classical music fan Bob is trying to woo an awkward co-worker Doreen.

He has brought in his much cooler friend Ted to help, but unfortunately the would-be lothario starts to muscle in on the act, aiming to sweep up Doreen for himself.

“Ted is a political chap, and a member of the Labour Party who were about to be knocked out of Government,” says Whatley. “The battleground between the Tories and the unions is beginning to appear, which would be fought all the way through to Thatcher’s time. “There is also a changing landscape for young people. Doreen is wearing a miniskirt for the first time, and loves the look of it, but isn’t quite comfortable with it. “At one point she has an argument with Ted about the unions, and he aggressively challenges her – she is not confident enough in her opinions to speak up for herself, but it shows how the male/female divide is beginning to break down. “Peter was writing in a world where people were beginning to find their feet, and sexual politics was coming in – it was an exciting time.”

At first glance The Public Eye seems quite a different play – despite sharing two of the same actors. It follows a private detective as he is sent to follow an accountant’s wife, but soon twists from a case of mistaken identity to something quite different.

“It’s a real pleasure watching the plays and connecting the links between them,” says Whatley. “The plays are inextricably linked. If we just performed The Private Ear on its own it would be immensely engaging, but it would not be complete, and vice versa.

“Bob interprets the world audibly through his music and can’t cope with the outside world. Julian, the private detective, has no private world – he lives in a vacuum of other people’s affairs. He describes himself as the third wheel, the third person in someone else’s marriage.

“They both have almost superhuman abilities in either their auditory or visual skills, but the other half is totally lacking – if you put them together you get a whole person.”

As such Whatley has approached the pair as one long play – even using a coup de theatre effect at the start of the second half to underline the links between the two pieces.

“In the 1960s one-act plays were very common,” he says. “They are just beginning to creep back into fashion again. It’s a lot more diverse than just seeing one play.”

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