It's got the most arresting title since Iain Heggie's Wiping My Mother's Arse, it's written by the man who grabbed headlines with Sex Addict and it's performed by an actor who has spent most of his career in drag. The big surprise is that Deep Rimming in Poplar is actually rather sweet.
Bette Bourne, most recently seen playing Quentin Crisp in Resident Alien, plays a 62-year-old Londoner who is frustrated with his declining sex life. A chance meeting introduces him to online dating, and pretty soon he is posting his profile on manlink.co.uk, a chat site modelled on the real-life website gaydar.co.uk (slogan: "What you want, when you want it").
Those who have seen Sex Addict will spot the parallels. Both as playwright and participant, Tim Fountain loves the way the internet allows men to be honest about their desires. Bourne reads Manlink's list of specialised chat rooms with relish, amazed at the openness denied to previous generations. Needless to say, he finds someone and his long-term relationship suffers. Fountain pushes his argument to say that if we were as honest face to face as we are online, such crises would be avoided. Gay or straight, he is the only playwright I know to be investigating the sociological impact of the internet in this way.
While Bourne has not yet fully mastered the script, he brings a touching sensitivity to the part that will surely gain in power as the run progresses (they're renaming it Hotboi for the sensitive souls in Soho after this appearance in the Glasgay festival). But, in a story with so much dramatic potential, Fountain is selling himself short by opting for a monologue instead of a fully fledged drama: there's room here for something much more ambitious.
· Until November 13. Box office: 0141-429 0022.
