Keith Allen plays ITV's Controller of Comedy in Not The Benny Hill Show, Jonathan Maitland's play inspired by a real meeting at ITV, at Wilton's Music Hall from Tuesday 6 to Saturday 17 April 2027.
It is 1989. Benny Hill, by the play's reckoning Britain's most successful comedian ever, is called in to see ITV's Controller of Comedy. His show has made the channel hundreds of millions of pounds. He expects a warm welcome. He does not get one.
Then it gets worse. Hill ends up stuck in the Controller's office with a feminist secretary and an angry young comedian, and finds out how far the world has moved without him. The question is whether he can move with it. Its producers bill it as a "provocative and timely play about the birth of woke".
Allen plays the Controller. Dugald Bruce Lockhart directs, and the production is presented by Canvey Rock Productions and Cahoots. The play contains discriminatory language and attitudes of the period.
The run lasts almost a fortnight, the longest stay of any play in the season. The running time is 1 hour 55 minutes, including an interval. Full-price tickets cost £15.50 to £30, with concessions from £13 to £27.50, and the play is booking now at Wilton's Music Hall.
It is one of the new plays announced in Wilton's spring 2027 season.
