LIFE is imitating art alas for York’s Mooted Theatre Co, whose cast and crew for the Dick Turpin tale of Dead Man’s Shoes have been burgled.

“Amongst the usual organised chaos of last week’s get-in and tech rehearsal at the Leeds Carriageworks, we were subject to a somewhat ironic, if completely unpleasant, experience for a group performing a play about the final days of highway robber Dick Turpin,” says lead actor Andy Curry, who plays Turpin in the touring production.

“We’d had an absolutely exhausting, back-breaking week getting everything ready for the first performances when, while beavering away on stage prepping and rehearsing, we were robbed.

“Some low-minded individual decided to relieve the dressing room of a wide variety of cast-and-crew possessions, much of it financially valuable, some of it very specifically emotionally and sentimentally valuable. There was no performance of dashing bravado or kissing the hands of fair maidens here, rather more a snatch and grab.”

However, the company is made of sterner stuff than the miscreant, asserts Andy.

“As always, the show must go on – and on it has gone. After opening the tour with a three-night run in Leeds to wonderfully enthusiastic audiences, we’ve moved on to our home city of York this week for performances at the Friargate Theatre on Tuesday, Wednesday and tonight,” he says.

Directed by Mark France, Mooted’s first world premiere is a “mostly true” telling of the final days of Dick Turpin and the mysterious woman in Brough, to whom he left his last effects.

• Tickets are still available for tonight’s 7.45pm performance on 01904 613000; the tour then moves on to The Square Chapel, Halifax, tomorrow (box office 01422 349422); the Frazer Theatre, Knaresborough, May 20 (mootedtheatre.com/tickets); and Rotherham Arts Centre, May 21 (01709 823621).