Funny things, clowns. Often funny ha-ha but always funny peculiar . . . Although the story would make a very readable book, and perhaps is more suitable for a radio play, it provides a vehicle for which any actor of a certain age would gladly give his eye teeth. Alan Coveney gave a faultless, tour de force performance that was a privilege to witness.

Garden was at times funny, often well observed, usually perceptive but always sad . . . It’s a simple story, but the best ones often are. Lucy Grace’s performance also had simplicity to it but, more than that, it had a depth and sincerity that managed to convey the loneliness and despair behind an exterior that always tried to be bright and cheery. I was impressed and it is not often I am so pleasantly surprised. I enjoyed Garden very much.

Footloose first saw the light of day as a 1984 film starring a youthful Kevin Bacon as the high-spirited lad up-rooted from his home in Chicago and dumped in dreary Bomont, a small town in West Virginia where dancing has been banned by the town’s preacher following the death of four local teenagers who crashed their car while returning from a dance . . .

The Everyman is billed as “Gloucestershire’s Theatre” and, with its in-house productions, is often very conscious of that. Although Beatrix Potter is usually associated with the Lake District, it was while she was visiting the West Country county that she penned one of her most famous, and she claimed her favourite, story. The theatre’s creative director, Paul Milton, has adapted The Tailor of Gloucester for the stage and has made not a bad job of it.