Moonlight and Magnolias - TNT

Ron Hutchinson's hilarious and witty new comedy goes behind the Hollywood scenes in 1939 to reconstruct the fraught creation of probably the biggest grossing movie ever, the Civil War epic Gone With The Wind,. The original director, George Cukor, has been fired three weeks into shooting, production has ground to a halt and a pile of potential screenplays have all been rejected. Faced with disaster, producer David O Selznick pulls a reluctant Victor Fleming off the set of the unfinished Wizard of Oz to direct what he is convinced will be a turkey, tempts former journalist Ben Hecht to leave his political conscience behind with a hefty fee and locks them in his office for five days, by which time Hecht (who not only has no respect for Fleming but also disliked the book so much that he never got past page one of Margaret Mitchell's 1000-plus page blockbuster) has to knock the screenplay into shape. Just in case there's anyone else out there who isn't familiar with the story of Rhett and Scarlett, Andy Nyman's hyper, driven Selznick and Steven Pacey's increasingly exhausted Fleming act out the plot for Duncan Bell's Hecht as he sits blearily at the typewriter trying to achieve, in less than a week, what 17 previous screenwriters had failed to accomplish.Selznick's secretary appears briefly — wading through the screwed up balls of paper to top up their supply of peanuts and bananas (the only 'brain' food her boss will permit), but this is virtually a three-hander that, so long as the excellent actors can sustain the exhausting pace, definitely deserves a West End transfer. Tricycle, Kilburn High Rd, NW6 (020-7328 1000). Until November 3