As a writer, David Leddy has something to say. As a performer, he has the means to say it. Yet somewhere between conception and execution his purpose has become obscured. Watching his latest one-man show is a draining experience: you see the effort that's gone into it, but get little in return.
Sitting round cabaret-style tables, it initially seems we're in for another night of cross-dressing campery. Leddy appears in drag, garishly attired in clashing zebra stripes and leopard spots, and bolstered to emulate the shape of the beautiful black women he adores. As LaToya Levine, he presents himself as the world's only "psychic soul sister", able to channel the voices of the great divas, alive and dead, at will.
On the surface, he's going through the same obsessions with the tragic lives of larger-than-life female icons you'll find in any drag club. But behind the cliches something else is going on. It's partly that Leddy is an accurate mimic, partly that Pippa Murphy's arrangements add disconcerting distortions to his soul classics. This is not pastiche, but neither is it clear what dark aspects Leddy is trying to unleash.
Around the songs, he tells a story of Levine's comeback tour, helped by a black boyfriend and hindered by the usual showbiz distractions. Into the mix go ubiquitous gay theatre scenes about brutal sex and queer bashing - which Leddy, a former artistic director of the Glasgay! festival, must have seen a hundred times - and some ill-focused theme about black culture.
It's interesting that Leddy, as a white man, should take this on but I saw no evidence of the "mischievous comment" promised by his publicity about black styles being appropriated by the white mainstream. Leddy might equally be making any number of comments - if only his show didn't feel like it was performed in secret code.
· Until May 28. Box office: 0141-552 4267.
