OK, it was the first night of two, in a small, hot room at the RAF Museum in Hendon. But it was a world premiere!
Written and directed by Robert Gillespie, whose credits include appearances in practically every British sitcom of the 1970s, The Red Baron has a cast of just three - Manfred von Richthofen himself, his father, and a fictional prostitute named Coco - and takes place entirely in Coco's room near the Western Front.
The actor playing Manfred did an excellent job, portraying the pilot as a handsome, arrogant bastard who goes to pieces when faced with a woman. (He was also hot; I enjoyed watching him march around the stage in his uniform and got quite excited when the plot required him to take his trousers off, though of course he was wearing long early-20th-century underwear beneath.)
Papa was also excellent, looking spookily how Manfred might have looked if he had lived to be an old man and delivering his pro-war polemics with passion.
And Coco got all the best lines:
MANFRED: I'm sorry. The only other living being I feel comfortable touching is my dog.
COCO: Woof.
I went along prepared to cringe a little. Instead I laughed, in the right way, and cried a bit too.
There's another performance on Saturday, and I hope it will be staged elsewhere in the future.
