The 1906 play, Next Time I’ll Sing To You, examines the life of the hermit of Great Canfield. The man who – at the age of 48 – decided to sell his cottage and build a hut in a field surrounded with ditches, hives of wild bees, barbed wire and two tons of corrugated iron fence. He lived alone there until he was brought out dead at the age of 84. His only contact was with his brother, who left him food outside his fence every day.

Each evening Rudge, the director, along with Meff, the joker, Dust, the cynic, and either Lizzie or her twin sister, gather to try and make sense of the extraordinairy life of James Alexander Mason, the hermit of Great Canfield. Their surreal quest is not made any easier by the actor, hired to play the hermit, wanting to know his motivation.

“All I want to do is to understand the purpose of existence of one man, not of the population of Liverpool, you understand, just one man – examine him and we shall know our ourselves.”