After seeing George Dillon performing his story The Master of Cafe Society as part of Stunning the Punters (& Other Stories) in 1990, Steven Berkoff gave him the manuscript of his (then) unpublished short story Hell. In 1992 Dillon matched the story to music by Harold Budd and took a double-bill of Say a Prayer for Me & Hell to the Edinburgh Fringe at 2 week’s notice. Despite not being in the Fringe programme, the show opened to a full house in the Assembly rooms on 24th August 1992, and played for 8 performances in 4 different venues.
In 1993, George Dillon toured Say a Prayer for Me & Hell in a double-bill with his new show The Remembrance of Edgar Allan Poe, and also performed a double bill of Dostoevsky’s Heaven & Berkoff’s Hell at the Brighton Festival.
In 1994, for a two week run at the Gate Theatre in London, George added a third story, The Secret of Capitalism, to make a triple bill, Hell & Other Tales.
For three performances at the Mermaid Theatre in London in 1996, George Dillon worked with musicians Charlotte Glasson and Rob Updegraff to create an original live musical soundtrack, and the following year this soundtrack was re-worked and recorded by Charlotte Glasson and Stuart Daye for 20 further touring dates.
George last performed the triple-bill Hell & Other Tales at the Cramphorn Studio in Chelmsford on 28th January 1998.
George Dillon kept Dostoevsky’s Heaven & Berkoff’s Hell in his repertoire, and perfomed the double bill at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2001, on tour in Holland in 2003, at the Atlantic Fringe in Halifax, Canada in 2011 and at the Teatromania Festival in Bytom, Poland in 2011.