Shot in 2021, a film of Allelujah, Alan Bennett’s 2018 play set on a geriatric ward, is released next month. How relevant does it remain? Its stars, including Jennifer Saunders and Bally Gill, share their thoughts during production – and more than a year later
I live 10 minutes’ walk from a disused psychiatric hospital in north London. Well, partly disused: 40% of St Ann’s in Tottenham, with the glossy new assessment centre and low-rise 30s blocks, is still going strong. The other side of the site, built as a fever hospital in 1892, has been gradually abandoned.
There is a Victorian laundry, grand as an ocean liner. A massive castellated water tower, like the rook in a giant’s chess set. A gorgeous sprawl of red-brick wards and lodges, with shaped gables, stacked chimneys and blind boxes over intricate windows.
