Descend into an underworld where drag queens bitch, pigeons explode, drugs are plentiful and pornography and murder are everyday occurrences. Russell Barr's monologue is a rich stew of a show that has the steamy stench of a dark Jacobean comedy. Except that it is not Jacobean, it is about Glasgow here and now, a place where puke, blood and teeth spill onto the street and Austrian blinds are called whore's knickers.
Delivered by a drag queen called Bernice Hindley - the self styled niece of Myra - Sisters is a tale of dysfunction as a way of life that lacks any semblance of good taste or political correctness. Charting an upbringing that involved shoplifting aunties, paedophile uncles, pornography consuming parents and car-driving Jack Russells, to a present awash with drugs, gay sex with the chief inspector of the fraud squad and violent odysseys, Barr creates a hilarious and desperate narrative of an existence filled with larger-than-life characters but no love.
As the evening proceeds, the monologue keeps breaking down, Barr staring back at us with wide, hollow eyes of despair. The stream-of- consciousness writing is good, shockingly good in its way, but seeing it in a theatre you can't help feeling like a visitor at the zoo looking at the exotic maybe dangerous animal behind the bars from a safe distance. What it really needs to work dramatically is a site specific setting - perhaps the dressing room of a nightclub - that would immediately lend it more focus, shape and context.
· Until August 28. Box office: 0131-228 1404.
