The title of Tim Fountain's two-hander is ambiguous. Does it refer to the movie star Rock Hudson, the 50s housewife's pin-up who never admitted to his homosexuality, and who died of Aids in 1985? Or is the rock of the title the Hollywood agent Henry Wilson, who discovered Hudson and transformed him from the gawky Illinois hick, Roy Fitzgerald, into the highest-paid star in the world, in the process both ruthlessly exploiting his client and protecting him from the FBI and Confidential Magazine, who were determined to out Rock as gay?
Wilson was Rock's rock, until he gradually crumbled away, his reputation eroded by drink and scandal. Wilson is played by Bette Bourne, who crumbles better than any actor I know. It is as if he is collapsing from the inside out. Entire landslides take place on his face during the course of a single sentence. He captures Wilson's essential sharkiness ("I find out what the market wants and I deliver it") and then makes you want to take the shark home and look after it.
To be honest, Fountain's play looks more like an outline than a play itself. But although thin, it is entertaining enough as we watch Michael Xavier's reedy-voiced Roy become macho Rock, posing as an Oscar statuette in gold body paint to get the media's attention and then trying to throw them off the scent of his sexuality by marrying Wilson's secretary, Phyllis.
Like the body paint, Fountain's script is all glitter and not enough substance. Bourne supplies the latter, but with a more robust script this might have been a piercing look at celebrity, homophobia and the relationship between a modern Frankenstein and his monster.
· Until June 21. Box office: 020-7582 7680.
