The Dancer in the Dark (Unabridged)

Reggie Oliver is a stage actor and playwright. His biography of Stella Gibbons was praised as "a triumph" by Hilary Spurling in the Daily Telegraph, his play Winner Takes All, was described as "the funniest evening in London", by Michael Billington in The Guardian, and his adaptation of Hennequin and Delacour's Once Bitten opened at the Orange Tree Theatre in London in December 2010.

THE DANCER IN THE DARK: Against a black backdrop strewn with stars the silver figure in a

long, floating dress sang and swirled, the little silk-shod feet mirrored in the polished black floor. Her voice trilled and swooped like an upper-class nightingale, with those odd strangulated vowels so alien to us today.