This is the full title of Alan Bennett’s play, as opposed to the shortened version used for the film. Americans, it was suggested, would think that the ‘lll’ meant that the movie was the third part of a trilogy! The original stage production and film were, of course, triumphs for the late Nigel Hawthorne as the mad monarch.

This undergraduate production had a good stab at baring the complexities and idiocies of late-18th-century court and political life. The action takes place in 1788, and much history has to be explained (“that rat-run House of Commons” dominated by Pitt the Younger and Charles James Fox), as well as how a monarch was still to be treated, however ill: “I am the King – you lift my leg” to a servant as he is being inserted into his breeches.

Meanwhile, the King is going mad – a beautiful Bennett line: “I am not going out of my mind; my mind is going out of me” – and the question is: how to cope? On occasions, especially when three or more courtiers or doctors gathered on stage, the production showed an amateur fragility, with a slowness in picking up cues and in delivery. But Jonathan Tilley, as George, held the production together with a genuinely moving and controlled performance. He goes down hill, suffers appallingly and then, seemingly, picks himself up again; Tilley worked these character transitions well.

Jennie Hyde as Lady Pembroke (the Queen’s lady-in-waiting and the King’s occasional squeeze) was very effective in an under-written part subtly made her own; of the several doctors brought in to deal with George’s problems, Matthew Chan as Dr. Warren had some good, sly moments.

There was peripheral stuff which Bennett clearly had fun writing but might not have worked even with professionals (scenes involving the Prince of Wales, for example. Overall this was a well-mounted production of a difficult play, and an example of good Playhouse judgment of what to choose from the student pitches made to it.