Find the best The Lady in the Van play tickets at The Robin Hood Theatre, Newark. Miss Shepherd is a curious and enigmatic lady. Alan knows very little about her. She used to drive ambulances in the war, might have been a nun, sells pencils and pamphlets and has an unexplained aversion to piano music. But somehow she lives in the playwright's garden and has done for years. The Lady in the Van is based on renowned British playwright Alan Bennett's own recollections of the indomitable Miss Shepherd and is, as with any Bennett play, a beautifully observed, sharply intelligent and wonderfully witty drama.