Twenty-five years ago, David Henry Sterry was a 17-year-old alone in Hollywood. Within hours of his arrival he had been raped by a man who lured him home with the offer of a steak. Within days he had become a teenage prostitute, servicing the rich, lonely sad women of the Hollywood Hills.
However, the only person who comes over as sad in this one-man show, "The True Story of a Teenage Gigolo", is Sterry himself, a man who made a choice half a lifetime ago that he still seems to regret. It was his choice, though: he wasn't an abused kid or especially needy, he just decided that screwing for a living was a darn sight more lucrative than frying chicken. If he got trussed, well, perhaps, he has only himself to blame.
Sterry's tales of his lowlife exploits are the stuff of therapy and the memoir, and the fact that he succeeds in making them as entertaining as he does is a tribute to his personality and performance skills. Sterry was told that one of the first rules of the job is that if something seems weird it probably is weird. A victim of past exploitation, he plunders his own memories and pays his therapy bills in the process. I wonder which is the more honest way to earn a living?
· Until August 25. Box office: 0131-226 2428.
