Released in 1987, and set at the end of 1969, Withnail and I is one of the best-loved British films of any era. The dialogue is endlessly quotable—“we’ve gone on holiday by mistake”; “we want the finest wines available to humanity!”—and it made an instant star of Richard E. Grant as the grandstanding, soaringly sozzled Withnail. Bruce Robinson’s semi-autobiographical depiction of two unemployed actors who leave their grotty London flat for a Lake District cottage (owned by Withnail’s gay—and predatory—Uncle Monty) became the very acme of a cult hit. It now makes its debut as a stage play at the Birmingham Rep. According to its director, Sean Foley, Robinson’s stage version of Withnail and I is “97.9 percent” faithful to the original. The dynamite dialogue is pretty much all there, although mostly kept indoors. Robinson had spent years turning down offers to put it onstage. Finally, the passage of time and the persistence of the producer, George Waud, changed his mind. —Dominic Maxwell