The ructions over the alleged obscenity of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of Marat/Sade, which I review on our arts pages today, is almost a rerun of what occurred when Peter Weiss’s play was first performed by the company in 1964. Indeed, very sImilar language has been employed.

Twenty-five-year-old Kate Dee, from Worcester, whose views were aired in a number of this week’s newspapers, said: “I know it was supposed to be edgy but in reality it was the worst kind of filth dressed up as quality theatre. I don’t blame people for walking out. They took it too far this time.”

Back in 1964, the production’s principal opponent was the impresario Emile Littler, of Stoll Moss Theatres. He included in his criticism David Rudkin’s brutal play Afore Night Come, the second strand to the RSC’s Theatre of Cruelty season at the Aldwych Theatre.

Littler said: “They are dirty plays. They do not belong, or should not, to the Royal Shakespeare Company.”

A defence was put up by Harold Hobson, the celebrated theatre critic of the Sunday Times. He wrote: “The assumption that plays such as the Royal Shakespeare Company puts into its repertory are in general immensely less acceptable to the public than entertainment plays is false. If the theatres are being emptied, it is the so-called entertainment plays that are emptying them.”

Curiously, in view of this opinion, Hobson was well-known for his belief that it was important to maintain the role of censor which was still being exercised at that time by the Lord Chamberlain.

I have not, incidentally, seen a production of Afore Night Come — which concerns the ritual slaughter of a harmless tramp by a group of Black Country fruit pickers — since the RSC’s memorable revival at the Other Place in 1974. What a stellar cast is revealed in my review, including Ian McDiarmid (as the victim), James Booth, James Aubrey, Michael Pennington and Richard Griffiths.

Another opportunity to see this influential play would be most welcome.