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On the London Stage - Neo-Classicism and Farce Fail to Lift London Stage Out of Doldrums 

“The Last Cigarette,” the Simon Gray-Hugh Whitemore collaboration at the Trafalgar Studios through Aug. 1, tends to find its trio of performers not barreling through doors but very much locked into position, cigarettes at the ready, inhabiting three versions of their creator. Such posture befits an adaptation of “The Smoking Diaries,” a typically candid, humorous, self-critical memoir from Mr. Gray, the playwright and chronicler who died last August at age 71. . . .

A minor play confronting major concerns, “The Last Cigarette” clearly has an effect on its audience, if the opening night crowd was any gauge. Following a play about a free thinker who lit up to the very end, how fitting, I suppose, that a noticeable portion of the house could be seen on the street afterward, seeking relief from the play’s deathly landscape in, you guessed it, a smoke.

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