In a climate where new writing is dominated by ‘high brow’ gritty, small cast, black box shows confronting the real issues of modern life, I’m offering something different. Not something new, something different, something forgotten. In these austere times, the last thing I want to do is watch three pretty boys remind me, through ill-executed cockney accents, just how poor and socially immobile I am.

For me, theatre, and especially music theatre, has always been about escape, as it was during and after the first half of the 20th century. Theatre took war-stricken pedestrians and transported them to far flung, decadent and lavish worlds populated by literally hundreds of dancing girls, sumptuous sets, archetypal characters and light-hearted comedy, all perched precariously on a gargantuan staircase, lit up like a Christmas tree.

With my work I want to reinvigorate the purpose of theatre, as I see it, for the people of Britain. I want to take those old values and mix them with other disciplines like physical theatre and live art, all with a healthy dose of satire and surrealism, and slap them all together on stage so people can come along and have a good old laugh. And that’s it. I don’t want people to go home with a spectre of impending doom and the biting realisation that they have funded another low budget, low risk, high profit production.

I just want them to have a good old laugh.