★★★☆☆ This one-man show has songs which thread through the piece, illustrating as they do Sowande’s first love – music. The atmosphere is for the most part congenial, delivered with the comfortable, measured pace of a lawyer anxious for exactitude in unpacking the salient details and passions of a life well-lived.

★★★★☆ New Old Friends has teamed up with the Lichfield Garrick theatre to present a very adult take on the 12 Days of Christmas. A cast of just four peopled the Ustinov stage with 13 characters, circling each other with festive paranoia as the bumping off began, Agatha Christie style, one by one . . . Great fun.

Plato thought that the world would be improved once rulers were also philosophers. Whether the same claim could be made for theatre were playwrights drawn from the ranks of philosophers is at least debatable, though examples are easy to find of playwrights with a philosophical bent producing stuff that gets bums on seats and accolades in the weeklies. John Mighton is such a one and his play about ageing and memory loss is a shining example of a complex idea being given dramatic form.