In theory the application of Gilliam’s still-firing creativity – at the age of 80 – to the evergreen genius of 91-year-old Sondheim’s 1986 hybrid of folk-tale narratives was a match made in heaven. Gilliam is steeped in this kind of realm – witness his 2005 fantasy adventure The Brothers Grimm – and has form on stage too. Ten years ago, The Telegraph’s then opera critic Rupert Christiansen gave his ENO production of The Damnation of Faust, by Berlioz, five stars, hailing its “dramatic flair, filmic fluency and sheer inventiveness”.

The production isn’t, in theory, precluded from coming to fruition – it needs to find a new home. But given Gilliam’s age, the clock is ticking and given that Sondheim doesn’t grant approval to every directorial pitch, this is a project that presumably he would like to have seen, or seen happen, while still around. 

I can’t imagine the public demand will have abated because of this set-back, it might even have been stirred by it. But the ramifications are enormous and troubling if it’s the case that a show can be pulled because of a staff backlash not related to the content of the show but the opinions expressed by its maker.

True, the “charge sheet ” could contain an allegation of impropriety or worse raised in March 2018, at the time of Gilliam’s broadside during Weinstein-gate (“It is a world of victims. I think some people did very well out of meeting with Harvey and others didn’t.”). Given that the Old Vic was accused in late 2017 of ignoring staff accusations of sexual misconduct against Spacey, and suffered reputational damage, you might assume due diligence would have been done in terms of bringing Gilliam in.

You can also see why they wouldn’t want the building again engulfed in questions related to #metoo. My understanding, though, is that the crux of the matter lies in his publicly aired remarks. Especially this one: in June 2018, he reflected on the BBC’s asserted emphasis on diversity in comedy (“If you’re going to assemble a team now, it’s not going to be six Oxbridge white blokes,” the controller of comedy commissioning, Shane Allen, was quoted as saying), and responded with a quip: “I tell the world now I’m a black lesbian.”