Those who didn't actually stand gave him a very vocal reception along with the applause, and although the play featured twenty actors in a superb ensemble performance, the evening clearly belonged to Branagh. In an interesting case of a career travelling full circle, Branagh made his name twenty years ago in Another County, where he undressed in front of (but with his back to)the audience in a dormitory scene: his return to the stage and debut at the National was marked by his removing his pants in a sex scene and giving the audience a full frontal as well as side and rear view.

Sex is very much at the centre of Edmond, a play about a 37 year old New Yorker who suddenly leaves his wife, goes on a drinking binge and looks for sex in the pre-clean up New York of the early 1980s, where every street corner seems to have a massage parlour, pimp, or card trickster. Along with various rip-offs and botched attempts to have (affordable) sex for money, Edmond eventually finds a more straightforward one-night stand - but this, too, goes horribly wrong.