Billed as 'A play for actors and an orchestra, the National Centre for the Performing Arts' new production of Every Good Boy Deserves Favour is a landmark theatre event that features an all-star cast and a 45-piece Symphony Orchestra of India playing live onstage.

For students of music, the title of the play is a classic mnemonic for remembering notes on the treble clef - EGBDF. The two principal protagonists of Every Good Boy Deserves Favour are inmates within the Soviet psychiatric prison system. One is a genuine schizophrenic - Ivanov is a triangle player who imagines he has his own orchestra. Alexander appears to be sane but has been declared insane for protesting against the regime. Ivanov's imaginary orchestra, on the other hand, appears in a very real and tangible way onstage and is itself one of the principal characters in the drama.