A NEW theatre company, Noontide Sun, launches its debut production at the Mercury this week.

For the company’s director, Christopher Hunter, it marks a welcome return to the Colchester theatre.

Christopher appeared with the Mercury Theatre Company in the acclaimed production of Iph in 2008 and has kept in close contact with the theatre since then.

Last year, he approached Mercury chief executive, Dee Evans, with a proposal for a new show, the Double Bass. It proved to be a good move.

Christopher says: “Initially the idea was to take it to Edinburgh, but then I went to see Dee, just to get her advice.

“It was a case of good timing really. I wasn’t expecting her to put it on, but they were looking at their programme for next year and suggested they could run it in the studio.”

Noontide Sun’s inaugural production is a one-man monologue about a tortured musician in love with a young opera singer. He believes that he remains anonymous to her because of the instrument he plays – the double bass, forever stuck at the back of the orchestra.

Christopher adds: “It’s by the German playwright Patrick Suskind, who many people will know from Perfume: The Story of a Murderer.

“The Double Bass was the play that made him a star in Germany. It was a huge hit in the Eighties and it’s still performed regularly there today.

“A friend told me about it back in the Nineties, but it’s only recently I came across it again.”

As well as the challenge of learning 57 pages of text, the former Royal Shakespeare actor has been kept busy putting the production together.

He laughs: “It’s only through doing this I have discovered how pampered we actors really are. When you’re an actor, you just make the bed. Now I’m buying it from the shop, putting it together and making it.”

He’s also learnt how to play the double bass.

He adds: “It’s more of an actor’s piece so you don’t need to play the double bass, but it does help to get you more involved.”

The Double Bass Mercury Theatre Studio, Colchester, February 17 to 19, 7.45pm.

Tickets £10 and £6.25 for concessions, available online at www.mercurytheatre.co.uk or by calling the box office on 01206 573948.