PETE Postlethwaite deserved every second of the applause that rained down after his performance.

Given in aid of Caitlin's Kickstart Fund, it was a brilliant master class in acting.

The one-man play by Justin Butcher features the clown Scaramouche in the last 90 minutes of his life, as he tells his story from his birth, on the stroke of midnight, at the end of 1899.

It is now New Year's Eve in 1999 and Scaramouche knows that, at midnight, his life will end after exactly 100 years.

Postlethwaite grabbed the audience's attention from the start and held it.

With an apparent minimum of movement and change of expression he evoked a huge range of emotions and situations - from Scaramouche's anguish at being taken from his home to the way a 7ft cobra rises from its basket.

Scaramouche lives through some of the blackest periods of the 20th century and Postlethwaite's self control, as he described his attempt to add a touch of humanity to the unspeakable horrors of a Nazi death camp, was beyond belief.

Many of the youngsters in the packed house were, like Caitlin Hurcombe, performing arts students from Ludlow College.

They will have learned a valuable series of lessons on timing from an hour and a half of watching Pete Postlethwaite.

They will also have learned that less does equal more, even if it takes a lifetime of acting at the highest level to achieve it. MB