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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Lyn Gardner

Confessions of a Dancewhore

In the programme to his solo performance piece, Michael Twaits recalls seeing Tim Miller perform. After the show, Miller said enigmatically that some of his memories "were so real that they actually happened". In Confessions of a Dancewhore, Twaits uses his own experiences of being gay and outside the mainstream to explore identity, but the boundaries between real and stage, truth and fiction are always blurred so you never quite know what is real and what is made up. Nonetheless, you believe every word.

In fact, the more personas he assumes, the harder it is to discover the real Michael Twaits. Is he Lady M, the vicious-tongued drag queen with her pug dog and eyelashes as long as Rapunzel's hair? The dutiful son who returns home for the Sunday roast? Future Oscar winner? Someone who gets abused on the top deck of the bus by homophobes? A man who wouldn't mind earning enough to get a mortgage?

This is unformed, fragile work, but if Twaits' look at the shifting nature of self is hardly original, he gets away with it through sheer force of personality. He is an engaging and engaged presence, and intercuts film and live action in an idiosyncratic manner. He is good, too, at making connections between the personal and the political, and reminding a generation that revels in the hedonism and power of the pink pound that Section 28 and Laramie are recent events, not ancient history. There is almost too much jostling for attention here, but this little show has plenty of potential - and Twaits' brave performance is eventually all the more revealing because he dares to be so vulnerable.

· Until May 3. Box office: 020-7582 7680.

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