The Worst of Scottee

Despite its opening number histrionics - a performance of ‘Cry Me a River’ accompanied by jets of ink shooting from underneath Scottee's sunnies to run down his face and onto his shirt, giving us a gruesomely goth approximation of tears - The Worst of Scottee is not so much cabaret as it is confessional. The Theatre Works blurb describes it as "wicked and hilarious", and certainly for the first fifteen minutes or so, performer Scottee beguiled many in the audience with lighthearted camp and occasionally bitchy anecdotes. As those of us who've had close friends with similar sensibilities can attest, this can get a little wearing - thankfully, this turned out not to be the subject matter of the whole performance, merely a way of easing us into the more serious side of the show.

Twenty eight year old Scottee, a gay man with a troubled past, recounts intimate details of his life while seated in a photo booth - clearly designed to evoke the claustrophobic solitude of the confessional. For much of the show he sits side-on to us, but we see his face via a screen on the front of the booth which relays his image from a camera inside. This creates a certain distance between us and the performer, which oddly enough seems to work in the show's favour - allowing us the space to consider the import of his stories.

And that's the substance of the show - four anecdotal pieces taken from his teen years growing up gay in a council estate in Kentish Town, occasionally interspersed with comments from his former friends, performed as interviews to camera and shown on the photo booth screen. There are a few more musical numbers, but they didn't work as well as the opening piece, partly due to Scottee's limited projection (he appeared to be unmiked) which prevented him from being adequately heard over the musical backing.

As for the stories - they ranged from the banal to the very moving, and the well paced and structured script wisely left the most serious piece to last. By this point, those audience members who had been laughing uproariously earlier in the show were stilled and silenced, as Scottee drew us all in and held us in his narrative thrall. Performed with skill and integrity, this is a show designed to make you question and reflect and one well worth seeing.

Alex Paige