May I Have the Pleasure…? purports to be a wedding party, and is set in a room-with-a-view at The Point hotel. We, naturally, are the wedding guests. There are ribbons and streamers and purple balloons; and celebratory silver sugared almonds and teeny little gold bells set out on all the tables, which are arranged around the dancefloor. Ah, the dancefloor! Where would any wedding be without the dancing? And yes, there is dancing, and there is a glitterball…

But that comes later. First, Do’s and Don’ts for the best man (mostly don’ts): Remember the ring. Don’t make long speeches, and don’t talk about yourself. Don’t crack inappropriate jokes. Don’t include sexual innuendoes, or tell embarrassing stories of the Groom’s sexual peccadilloes. Don’t shag the bridesmaid in the toilet.

Adrian Howells has been to scores of weddings, and quite a few civil partner ceremonies, and he has been a best man on – oh, I think he said eight occasions. And he is guilty of all the ‘don’ts’ above. Well, all except shagging the bridesmaid in the loo, although he has also been a bridesmaid himself. We don’t get to hear whether he made out with the best man on that occasion, but we do get another toilet sex story, which turns out to be a very poignant little tale about being single, making personal judgements and choices, and handling expectations.

Most awfully and heartbreakingly, he’s been best man to his (then) best friend Rich, and on the night before the wedding shared a hotel room with the groom and lay awake desperate to touch the man he was in love with. Yvonne Fair’s fabulous lament It Should Have Been Me resounds round the room, and Adrian stands still and upright, beating his chest fiercely and rhythmically. He has hardly heard a word from Rich since the wedding day all those years ago, we learn, and having seen (on film) the excruciatingly embarrassed Rich listening to Adrian’s saucy comments in the speech, this doesn’t surprise us too much. But don’t beat yourself up about things in your past you can’t change, is Adrian’s message.

We learn all of the above through tasty little titbits of confessional-autobiographical storytelling; through watching the gorgeously fuzzy Kodachrome Super-8s of the various ‘best man’ speeches; and through stylised re-enactments of key scenes and lines from those weddings.

But it’s not all about him, it’s about us too – and would you believe it, there’s a couple at the show who just recently got married! Adrian quizzes them about their wedding (held in a field, as it turns out), and in one of the lovely little interactive games we play – games that are reminiscent of Adrian’s earlier show, An Evening With Adrienne – we are asked to make a list of wedding essentials: the guests, the bride and groom, the vicar or celebrant, the cake, the fizz, and of course the music. Cue laminated sheets listing the most popular wedding songs, and each table goes into a huddle to pick their song. Lionel Ritchie’s ‘Three Times a Lady’ is our table’s choice, and someone is elected to join Adrian for the ‘bride and groom’s first dance’. They snuggle into each other’s arms and dance, and when the dance finishes, they hold hands and stand silently, side-by-side, representing all the brides and grooms that have ever been and will ever be. (I could shout ‘It Should Have Been Me’ here, but actually on this occasion, it was me!) As the night progresses, there are other dances. We get taught ‘The Sloop’ and it all ends – as it must – with the demented dad-dancing disco.

As with all Adrian Howells’ work, the structure and execution of the work is beautiful – and he always takes the most tender care of his audience. If there is a minor criticism, it is that the ‘set piece’ texts are not quite as comfortably delivered as the more improvised sections, and there are a few ‘settling in’ things to do with audience chair-shuffling and attention shifts that need easing in. This is said, though, with the qualifier that it was a preview night at the beginning of a run in a non-theatre-space, and such tiny blips are to be expected.

Adrian Howells’ work of recent years has divided into the one-on-one pieces (such as The Pleasure of Being: Washing, Feeding, Holding, also presented at The Point during this Fringe) and what we might call the ‘come into my parlour’ shows, in which we share an environment with Adrian that is designed as a vehicle for his autobiographical writings. What both strands of work share is an absolute understanding of the mechanics of theatre and a celebration of the performer and audience relationship. In this age of interactive/immersive theatre, it’s good to remember that Adrian Howells has been there a long time, and this experience shows in the quality of the work he presents. What a pleasure it is to be in his company!