But that's quite appropriate, because history's most celebrated victim of disability has a lot in common with Burton characters like Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood and even Sweeney Todd. He's living outside what passes for normality.

Without the prosthetics of David Lynch's celebrated movie – not based on the Pomerance play - the part of John Merrick, the sideshow freak who became a darling of high society, provides a wonderful acting challenge, and one that Joe Duttine rises to quite brilliantly.

From the moment he makes his first appearance, fully able-bodied, and then turns himself into a disturbing and moving approximation of Merrick's terrible condition, he creates a fascinating character, warm and witty, a touching blend of the tough and the vulnerable, with a keen intelligence that sees through the double standards of Victorian – and our – morality and hypocrisy.

That's really what Pomerance's play, not the most profound, is about.

We see Merrick rescued, all too quickly, from the degradation of circus sideshow life before the play settles into a wordy and often repetitive study of how he became a victim of another sideshow, more comfortable but no less damaging.

The piece is at it's most engaging in scenes between Merrick and Madge Kendall – an outstanding Catherine Kanter – the stage star who formed a relationship of sorts with a man on the exterior.

At the play's centre is a basic question: what really is the difference between Antony Byrne's high-minded doctor Frederick Treves – the central character and troubled moral compass – and Clive Hayward's opportunistic fairground barker Ross?

By watching, you are forced to ask the same of yourself.
John Highfield