Watermill theatre, Newbury
A fine, multitasking cast of three deliver laughs aplenty in Ian Hislop and Nick Newman’s adaptation of a 1930s satire, though the cad’s true malice is lacking

On paper it looks like a good match: satirists united across the decades. Ian Hislop, editor of Private Eye, and his longtime collaborator Nick Newman (they first worked together on Spitting Image scripts) have dramatised the acid-sharp The Autobiography of a Cad by Scottish writer AG Macdonell (their fifth play for the small but perfectly formed Watermill theatre). What could possibly go wrong?

The novel, published in 1938, covers the life of Edward Fox-Ingleby across roughly the first 26 years of the last century: his landed background, entitled youth at Eton and Oxford, debauched years as a rake about town, profiteering during the first world war, entry into politics, marriage, adultery, double dealings – think Evelyn Waugh but without that author’s sunny view of humanity. Macdonell’s cad presents himself to the reader as a gentleman, covering despicable actions with self-serving, pseudo-altruistic justifications. He typifies the worst kind of landowner, capitalist, politician, developer and misogynist, a composite character revealing the spectrum of corruption across society in his time – and all times.

The Autobiography of a Cad is at the Watermill theatre, Newbury, until 22 March