Saturday 27 March

Sir Dempson’s first speaking role with his new company (Chorlton Love-Es) is typically farcical, yet he is ably mentored throughout by our good friend Franco Kestrel, who strolls through In Through the Out Door! with a casual insouciance well-suited to his role as a prospective MP. Such a house-bound scenario, while occasionally repetitive, beats having to learn lots of fancy lines straight after the mute commitment that was ‘1965’; instead inviting Makepeace to move, and occasionally rock, his body – diving behind sofas whenever indiscrete pairings venture forth into the pristine drawing rooms of the creator’s tawdry mind, or flashing the audience with his miniature private eye’s camera. Early nerves settled we must now wait and see how far my good friend can travel on the road to Puppet Show stardom. Myself, and my several dozen uncommissioned stage-plays, wish him very well indeed.