Well, gentle readers, if you happen to be of a nervous or sensitive disposition, I suggest that you look away now. The mild-mannered and affable “I can’t imagine you angry” director has turned.

Maybe it was the cumulative effect of a couple of shows starring a boy or a girl Who Let Me Down then triumphed always at the eleventh hour. Perhaps it was the collective disappointment but residual stoicism of this cast in the face of ongoing adversity. Perhaps it was the sticky humid airless not summer.

But the no show on Thursday last week made me boil with rage. To the extent that I texted my plan B post-rehearsal. The silly girl replied in the affirmative. And now she has found herself, with two weeks to go, playing Antigone in the Edinburgh Fringe.

I am tormented with guilt. Poor Shirley who was reading up on the historical significance of mythology. Shirley who was going to faithfully clip in 8 hours of colourful dreadlocks to give herself the required quirks to be a fitting Antig. Shirley whose face is now plastered all over the website, the flyer, the twitter account.

Still, I suppose the play is the thing. I feared another couple of missed rehearsals tipping a jovial cast over the edge into grumpy anxiety. And grumpy anxiety, as I know well from CCC days, does not sell tickets. Nor does an under-rehearsed play.

So the monster struck and did the evil deed at the weekend. Sweet pretty Karen has now had two rehearsals, coping womanfully with the adrenalin-fuelled circumstance. I suspect she is frantically scouring her script for helpful memorising inspiration as I write. I need to break it to those of the cast that weren’t exposed to new Antig at the weekend, at tonight’s rehearsal. Maybe they will mount a coup.