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A theatre in the wasteland, built on uncomfortable truths. The name has changed but the blood’s the same, and though statues have toppled, the clang of their falling still rings down the years. I’m in the pit band of repossessed instruments, vamping on comb and paper, busking a ballad that I never much cared for, though it’s stuck in my head all this time. Even if we could afford actors, they all work in cyber now, their Pinteresque pauses haunting helplines, their pantomime pratfalls blacking out city after city. So instead, the stage is stacked with dolls, their forms problematically perfect, their eyes shining like martyrs kissed by flames, miming a hack script about the rise and fall of empire, and the staircase of broken bodies that stretches to the gods. It’s behind you! cries the audience, Pavlovian to the last. But it isn’t. It’s all around us, from the melting salted caramel ices, to the stink of old money in the weighted drapes; and it’s right in front of us, writhing like a bound ballerina, waiting for the music to stop.