Until now, I had always considered that PC Plod was the most deviant policeman in English fiction. But now making the leap from page to stage in a one-man show we have Irvine Welsh's plain clothes Scottish detective Bruce Robertson, a man suffering from eczema of the balls, intestinal worms and terminal life rage.
Robertson is the antithesis of all those moody, broody TV detectives like Inspector Morse. Robertson's idea of a good night in is a blast of heavy rock, a line of cocaine, plenty of high-fat junk food washed down with a bottle of whisky and a video of the Alien Space Dykes variety. His idea of a good night out is a little cross dressing, sexual abuse of teenage girls, racial harassment and even murder. He became a policeman because growing up "I witnessed police oppression in the community and I wanted to be part of it." Ha, ha, ha.
Joe Orton may have got there first when it comes to clapped out coppers being corrupt on stage, and after recent scandals and the Stephen Lawrence inquiry, we now actually expect our policemen to be racist, sexist and homophobics. We'd be surprised if they turned out not to be bent.
But, as ever, Welsh's trump card is excess and its an excess that translates well to the stage. Robertson is not just bad, he is monstrous. He's not just corrupt, he's like a walking, talking, highly virulent disease. To use his own phrase, you can almost smell "the Judi Dench" rising from his guts.
The strength of Welsh's perception, beautifully realised in Tam Dean Burn's often cleverly vulnerable performance (this is an actor who can play a tape worm as convincingly as a human), is that he knowingly creates what is irredeemably loathsome but then offers us a glimpse of something pitiably and recognisably human beneath the filth. In a minute you go from cartoon to catastrophe. Somewhere beneath the heaving self disgust, rampant paranoia and drug filled fantasies there is a nicer man, possibly even a half decent one, trying to scramble out. But it is as futile as the desperate efforts of his wee brother to climb out from beneath the mountainous coal slide all those years before.
I don't entirely buy the rather convenient Robertson-had-an-unhappy-childhood-so-that's-why-he's-a-mess angle, but in setting the story at Christmas, a time of hope redemption and unbelievable loneliness, Welsh and his adaptor and director Harry Gibson pile on the dramatic irony.
At the end, the newly dressed Christmas tree winks it coloured lights mournfully. Sweetbox belt out Everything's Going to be Alright, and an acrid smell, maybe of despair, hangs heavy in the air.
Until October 9. Box-office: 0141-429 0022
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