Here’s a rare example of a theatrical “greatest hits” package. So successful last year were the three individual acts, playing over as many evenings, recounting the life of gay icon and actor Bette Bourne, they’ve been edited down to a single two-hour show. Niftily packaged as this story now is, it’s tough to discern where each act begins and ends, and there’s an inescapable sense that the narrative is the worse for it.

Diehard admirers of Bourne, who moved from a childhood in the post-war East End to a burgeoning career as a young actor in classical theatre before discovering gay rights campaigning in a Notting Hill commune and founding the legendary drag theatre company Bloolips, won’t be flummoxed by the awkward format of the show.

Playwright Mark Ravenhill acts — and this is a double entendre the mischievous Bourne himself would surely relish — as the straight man, asking questions and prompting his subject through a “scripted chat”, which is based on weeks of private conversations these two friends enjoyed a year ago.

It’s peculiar to watch Bourne well up during certain sections of a dialogue he must by now have had with Ravenhill many times before, and even more unsettling to read that exact interlude transcribed in the printed programme-cum-script. Bourne is, thankfully, made of stern stuff and it’s swiftly on with his event-packed life, which he recounts with occasional forays into a marvellous facility for a range of accents.

It’s when Bourne, quick-witted, touchingly vulnerable and dressed in a sparkly top he calls “my Golders Green drag”, talks about the pioneering Bloolips that he, and the show, really perk up. He’s too modest to mention it, but his life encompasses many of the milestones in 20th-century Gay Lib, which fact alone makes these acts well worth following.
Until 27 February. Box office: 020 7478 0100, www.sohotheatre.com