The Divine David’s Spatial Awareness No. 1Andrew Burnet/The Scotsman
Whatever else may be said about the Divine David, he is absolutely unique. Imagine the bastard offspring of Julian Clary and Liza Minnelli and you begin to get some idea. He totters on-stage in stiletto heels and chiffon trousers, looking unfeasibly tall and thin, and begins a spiel which is part devil-may-care badinage, part parody of avant garde pretension.
His speech is littered with faux French, and he punctuates his act with "abstract shapes": mock melodramatic poses with grandiose titles. From time to time, he sings anything from a deconstructed Hello Dolly to his own composition, It’s a Game Any Number Can Play. He is a pretty good singer. "I feel moved", he will suddenly announce, "to express myself through the medium of contemporary dance." He is a pretty good dancer too, though the choreography tends to culminate in a homoerotic strip-tease. Lap and pole dancing, he says, are neglected "major disciplines in dance" with the power to redeem us all.
Taking themes from the audience, he creates paintings on the huge canvas at the back of the stage (he is a pretty good painter). He also hands out small paintings to audience members. He is assisted throughout by Jay Cloth, a submissive, androgynous figure whose role resembles that of Madge Allsop, the downtrodden sidekick of Dame Edna Everage.
Over the past few years, Divine David has established himself on the gay and performance art circuits (he has been in the business 25 years, he tells us unconvincingly). Earlier this year, he presented a late-night show on Channel 4 . But he comes to bury the mainstream, not to praise it. On one level he is a charlatan with little material beyond his own charismatic presence, but this is a truly anarchic show and he expresses contempt for government, for mainstream society, for capitalism, and mockingly declares his show’s power to overthrow these scourges. Make no mistake: beneath the ghoulish excess of makeup; beneath the high camp, is an angry seriousness of purpose.
****rating
Until 30 August at the Gilded Balloon