"Tom and Viv was, in production terms, more top of the bottle than best Jersey. This was a 2008 radio version of Michael Hastings’s stage play, shocking when first seen on stage in 1984 (the year of its original radio production too) because it revealed the torments and dilemmas of TS Eliot’s first marriage. Benedict Cumberbatch starred in this later production as penniless expatriate American Tom who, in 1915, impetuously wed English artist and socialite Vivienne Haigh-Wood (Lia Williams), unaware that she was physically ill and being prescribed medicines that also made her mentally unstable. Her mother (Judy Parfitt) was against any marriage for Viv lest the “little secret” of her strange behaviour might come to light. David Haig, from the original Royal Court and Radio 3 cast, again (and brilliantly) played Vivienne’s brother Mark, an affectionate, blundering, evasive duffer.

What keeps this play vivid is how it makes us perceive its characters in their time and ours, the snobberies and secrets of then, the dangerous certainties of now. Hastings’s vision was rewardingly complex, his expression of it clear. It was a pity Cumberbatch couldn’t quite manage Eliot’s American voice but even he is not perfect." (x)

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