At about half past eleven, Ahmet turned up with two bottles of Turkish champagne and – no surprise – Maureen accompanied him. She had dressed very smartly for the first night. Along with the fur and the jewellery, she’d had her hair permed so ferociously that it looked like one of those balls of wire you use to scrub pans. Ahmet was in an ebullient mood, smoking a foul-smelling cigarette even though it wasn’t allowed backstage. He had come from the party with compliments ringing in his ears. He was certain the play was a success and grabbed me with both hands.

‘You are a genius!’ he exclaimed. ‘A great genius!’ He sounded almost relieved. As if he had never believed it until now.

Everyone picked up their glasses and drank a toast to me. By now we’d all had too much to drink.

It couldn’t last long. And it didn’t.

It was at exactly twelve o’clock midnight when Sky suddenly looked up from her phone.

‘There’s a review online!’ she exclaimed.

‘That’s a bit early,’ Ewan said. He didn’t look pleased. ‘Who’s it by?’

‘Harriet Throsby.’ She gazed at the screen and we all saw the look that came over her face. ‘I can’t read this,’ she said, in a low voice.

‘Let’s see it.’ Tirian snatched the phone from her and laid it on the table. We all crowded round. This is what we read:

MINDGAME AT THE VAUDEVILLE

by Harriet Throsby

Is there any torment greater than the comedy thriller that is neither comedic nor thrilling? It’s so easy to fall between the two stools … and what you might call a theatrical stool, in quite another sense, will inevitably result. That, I’m afraid, is what Anthony Horowitz provides at the Vaudeville Theatre. Known for his Alex Rider series of books, which, to be fair, have encouraged a generation of boys to read, his talents fall lamentably short of what is required for an entertaining evening in the more adult arena of the West End and he must take much of the blame for what ensues. Having said that, I have to ask what it was that drew so much talent to this painful farrago.

We can dispense with the story fairly quickly. A journalist, Mark Styler (Tirian Kirke), arrives at a lunatic asylum to interview one of the inmates, a serial killer by the name of Easterman. But first he has to persuade the asylum’s director, Dr Farquhar (Jordan Williams), to allow him access. We quickly realise that things are not as they should be. Why is there a skeleton in Dr Farquhar’s office? What are the strange screams coming from B Wing? Why is Nurse Plimpton (Sky Palmer) terrified?

The lunatics have taken over the asylum, that’s why. Nothing is what it seems, and as the identities of the main players are shuffled around like playing cards before a particularly feeble magic trick, even the set joins in. A door opens into a cupboard one minute and into a corridor the next. A picture on the wall changes slowly. It may be that these special effects are meant to say something about madness and sanity, about how we can’t trust our perception. But sadly, the production has been so cheaply mounted that they aren’t very special at all and tell us only that we should have gone somewhere else.

As the play continues, the gratuitous violence mounts. It turns out that Easterman, the killer, is free and in control of the action … which becomes ever more distasteful as Nurse Plimpton is tied to a chair and threatened with immolation. By this point, I myself was tempted to punch an usher and make a break for the exit. The casual use of a woman as a would-be victim of male-inflicted aggression is particularly displeasing. Sky Palmer is a talented actress who struggles with a part that demeans and devalues her at every turn. By contrast, Jordan Williams seems to be having a good time as Dr Farquhar, but has failed to notice that nobody else is. Mr Williams is becoming increasingly grandiloquent with age and gives the impression that he is only performing to entertain himself. In this, he may well be right. One really must wonder how many more bad career choices he can make before he realises that he no longer has a choice or, indeed, a career.

Most disappointing for me is Tirian Kirke, whom I recognised from the first time I saw him as one of the most promising actors of his generation. It’s a promise broken. His performance is quite childish and, surprisingly, he is completely unconvincing when things turn violent. Kirke was so very good in Line of Duty on TV, but has failed to make a successful debut on the stage. He has been poorly assisted by Ewan Lloyd, who seems to be directing on autopilot. In his hands, the play never really catches fire, limping to a conclusion I had guessed long before the interval.

My advice to Mr Horowitz would be to stick to children’s books, where, perhaps, he will find a less discerning audience and one that will put up with his somewhat jejune ideas. And my advice to the audience? I’d say you should run to get tickets for this one – if you really want to see it. I suspect it won’t be around for long.