ALAN Bennett says he has always had a soft spot for George III, ever since studying the Hanoverian king for his scholarship examinations.

The Leeds historian turned playwright applies history, imagination and erudite wit in equal measure in his state-of-the-nation study of "Farmer George", the forward-thinking king beset by illness.

In our tabloid times, we are used to prying into the private lives of the Royal Family, exposing all manner of secrets, and in turn the Royal Family has - allegedly - become more transparent since the car-crash death of Diana.

The only regal prying in George III's time was conducted by his physicians, poking about his body, seeking the root cause of a condition that reduced the king to a gibbering wreck. His alarming behaviour was deemed to be madness, and not until later medical advances would his ailment be diagnosed retrospectively as porphyria.

Whereas now, we seem to take glee in deriding and debunking our royals, the courtly 18th-century world of George required the king to be untouchable, impregnable, as the ultimate representative of the health and wealth of a nation. Like a cash-cow boxer in decline being pushed too far by his trainer and hangers-on, George III had to recover at all costs for the greater good.

Bennett's play is grave when required, yet anarchic in its humour, as he prods the belly of the English in high places with a sceptic's eye. This is as much Bennett's George III as the king from the history books, hence the Prince of Wales's frustration at inactivity and Pitt the Younger's plea for five more years in power chime with today.

Hence, too, Rachel Kavanaugh's magnificent new revival of this political play from the self-aggrandising Thatcher years has a trio of golden pigs to the side of the stage (outwardly a reference to Farmer George's interest in agriculture, but also a comic contrast, like spotting a food stain on a dignitary's dinner jacket).

The gauche pigs contrast with the pomp and ceremony of Francis O'Connor's sumptuous set of red steps, fringed in blue, with a white curtain that doubles for set-changing and medical privacy. On top of this Union Flag combination of colours, Handel's vaulting, impossibly beautiful music adds still more grandeur.

In his first ever Bennett role, Michael Pennington gives a wonderful performance, his George being full of whimsy, wit and intelligence, yet terror of the unknown, all underscored by shards of regal pomposity. It would be madness to miss it.

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Updated: 10:59 Friday, September 26, 2003