We were Number 3 on Venue's 'Recommended' list this week, but I didn't expect a virtually full house on the hottest evening of the year at the Alma Tavern for the opening of Vampire Nights, nor a tribe of (twelve) real vampires in the audience - real enough, anyway, to cause an exotic and glamorous stir.

I was going to wait till I had the official pix of Love Bites and ...whisper it... a review, but in response to enquiries here's an interim posting from the first night - with huge appreciation to vampiric victim Kirsty Cox, her multi-tasking angel & demon lover Matt Ward, Anne Stiddard for a fantastic car-crash setting, Paul Lewis for atmospheric lighting, Chris Loveless for inventive direction, and of course the ever-supportive Stepping Out producer Steve Hennessy. It's an amazing privilege to be the curtain raiser in this double-bill. Matt, when he finished playing seven parts in my play, stepped straight back on stage with a monologue performance nearly four times as long and a lot darker too - St Nicholas by Conor McPherson.... I'm in awe.

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