I Shot Dirty Den

As criminal Gregory Mantel, actor Pavel Douglas ordered the execution of Dirty Den in EastEnders in 1989, only to witness Lesley Grantham’s character stage an improbable return to the Square in 2005. This begs the question, if Grantham can return, why can’t he? And more worryingly for Douglas, if Dirty Den didn’t die, has his own character been written out of history?

Such musings grow to epic proportions in this one-man show, as Douglas sits in his flat waiting for the phone to ring, while recalling his disrupted childhood and pondering his career path to date. He is a convivial guide through the highs and lows of his history.

Born in Krakow, Poland, Douglas was abducted by his mother when he was four years old and taken back to her native Scotland. He never saw his film star father again. The tale is tragic but the retelling is occasionally laid on a bit thick – his descriptions of his Polish childhood are so romanticised it seems clear that invention has been favoured over genuine memory.

Co-written with Andy Burden, the show is honest and savagely funny about the dreams and disappointments of the profession. As an actor who has great ability but is, he claims, out of the golden loop – not strictly true, he works regularly on TV – Douglas alternately self-aggrandizes and deprecates.

A nice skill of the piece is that any time it runs the risk of being too self-involved, wry humour comes to the rescue. At one point Douglas stares urgently at a telephone number as though mustering the courage to make an important personal call, and begins dialling, only to order a pizza. This winning combination of dramatic tension and comic release is a great strength, facilitated as it is by Douglas’ powerful stage charisma.