That gem of a Georgian playhouse

It had been back in September that I went to see my friend Alys in a show at the Theatre Royal Bury St Edmunds. We had all gone to the pub afterwards and I'd met Abi, her director. We knew some people in common, had been at the same venue at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe as students about 678 years ago, we talked a lot. Luckily for me, Alys had told Abi lots about the show and when I said I really wanted to bring it to the Theatre Royal Bury St Edmunds, Abi suggested I send some stuff, and send it fast. They had nearly confirmed the spring season and there wasn't much space left, but she would see what she could do. I'd sent the information off to her and it turned out that they had one date left, which they offered us: 30 April 2011.

Mum took all three of us as children to the theatre, to concerts. I think I probably got to see far more theatre than many of my friends because Mum wanted someone to go with and as soon as any of us showed willing for one adult activity (not Adult activity) or another, we would be taken along. And I lived in a small village near Bury St Edmunds, which meant that my local theatre was Bury St Edmunds Theatre Royal, a 350-seater, proscenium arch gem of a Georgian playhouse. Anyone who's ever performed there longs to go back: it has an intimacy which is rare, which must stem from the traditional layout combined with its utter miniaturity.

As a child I saw Cheek By Jowl, the Oxford Playhouse and endless other wonderful theatre companies, over and over again doing their extraordinary, ground-breaking things. From the back of the Gods, so just over arm's-reach, I saw Stephane Grappelli, and from the box next to the stage, my 12th birthday party allowed us to see The Flying Pickets: my first gig! I was as wild then as I am now: sometimes I like to go without shoes and sometimes I take sugar in my coffee, sometimes I don't. Seriously wild.

Of course, it didn't occur to me that this was not normal fare, that not every small town in England didn't have its own intimate, brilliant theatre. I knew it wasn't easy financially – by the 80s, the theatre was owned by the National Trust and so was not the commercial enterprise that many theatres have to be, and I also knew that the theatre had been saved from being a barrel store for the Greene King Brewery in the 60s. I knew this because Stanley Vincent, my father's uncle, had been a key member of the committee to do this. But I had no idea just how lucky we were and in Stephen, the artistic director, who programmed in a wonderful way, seemingly specifically for me.

And so, here we are, 30 April 2011. I walk onto the stage for the first time since performing here with my school friends. I am swept away with excitement, and this is just the tech, where Bartelt talks to the technical team and I swan around, singing to warm up my voice, pacing the stage, taking photos. Tonight this will be my stage… it’s surreal. I wonder whether I am really up to this task: all these people, so many of whom I’ve known all my life, who knew my sister, friends of my parents: not just my mother, my father as well. The terrible spectre of who on earth I’m thinking I am returns… it’s been a while, but it’s back now. Bartelt’s here, he’s confident, the team are lovely, the theatre have taken the punt: Abi and Colin have been so supportive... I am about to let them all down, spectacularly. And Chris, my best mate from university, who's coming to do the second half of the evening with me just out of the kindness of his heart, I’m about to let him down too.

We've done lots of aftershow talks with this show, formal ones, as well as an informal one after every single show. The plan is a chat with the two of us, him asking me questions. He rocks up halfway through the tech, we hug, he greets Bartelt, the technical team. He’s in one of his characteristically flowery shirts. In the end I have nothing to lose, no reputation, but this chap is a bit famous and I could be about to let him down enormously.

It doesn’t compare to him giving us a quote for the Edinburgh show, though, for sheer, vertiginous worry: he gave it to us before he’d seen the show, and it was 16 August when he saw it, a good two weeks in. I remember so clearly, him leaving the theatre, walking towards me, saying that was alright,

“Was it?”

“Yes.” Awkward, relieved laughter on both parts. We embrace, and stand back from each other. Chris knew Kate, we’d all got very drunk on ouzo together with Gav over a game of contract whist, he and I had ended up sliding down the stairs quite a long way, giggling, on our way to bring in my sister's asthma medication from the car, too drunk to do ourselves any harm, that kind of thing.

“The first ten minutes were strange, because it was you but not you, it was your story, but not you telling it… then I got used to it. I…” he breaks down in tears and I hug him hard.

He’s much taller than me, so, as he folds to hug me, I see a woman standing behind him, holding pen and paper for his autograph. Edinburgh is odd.

And here we are, in the Theatre Royal Bury St Edmunds, were last here together in our early twenties to see a show. Now we are the show. And I am hoping and praying I’m not about to dent his fantastic career by being crap tonight. He looks at me with such love that I can’t even mention my fear, and being associated with me, however poor I am, will not make any difference to his career, I remind myself vigorously. To quote a production by the inestimable Scene & Heard Theatre Company where children write the plays and adults produce and perform them: “I've got to stop thinking I'm all that.”… But I mind what he thinks. Oh, dammit, I'm getting nervous.