The Scotsman

A star is born – In The Shade

I'D HESITATE to say that a star is born in David Leddy's new solo show, at the Tron until Saturday. But all the same, there's a feeling of being in at the start of something momentous, as Leddy - a former director of the Glasgay! festival - rolls out this big, brave, messy and, at the moment, slightly overlong performance, which actually attempts to deconstruct the whole sinister connection, in our culture, between oppression, victimhood and sex, and the impact of that connection on the huge political issues of race and sexuality.

Set in a café-style studio space strewn with phone-box cards offering extreme sexual services, In The Shade is built around the character of Latoya Lavine, a huge and absurd-looking south London drag queen, who describes herself as "the only psychic soul singer".

Latoya channels the voices of all the greats, from Nina Simone and Aretha Franklin to Billie Holiday and Miriam Makeba; and it's through the imaginary life of Latoya - from 1970s New York to the back streets of Mexico - as well as the real life of the rough, tough English roadie who has taken on her personality, that Leddy sings, romps, strips and acts his way towards an extraordinary vision of how sexual and racial oppression breeds not only ever more exotic and bizarre forms of camp culture, but also horrific self-hatred and violence and, in the end, real revolutionary rage.

The show is overstuffed with cultural and political material, referencing every form of musical innovation and rebellion from here to the Harlem Renaissance, and memorably declaring, of Nina Simone, that "the struggle for black civil rights had worn her ass paper-thin".

Leddy probably introduces one extreme character too many. But there's no mistaking the scale of what he is attempting here, or how close he and director Kate Nelson come to making it work. And when he finally smears himself with black face-paint at the end, to deliver a chilling version of Brecht and Weill's great song of implacable revolution, Pirate Jenny, there's a genuine five-star prickle down the spine; and a faint but definite sense of greatness in the making.

Joyce McMillan, 24 May 2005