Gary McNair : Work in Progress, Traverse

What it says on the tin.  Very much the performer trying out part-finished new material on an audience, although McNair's falsely modest statement that he'd get more out of the evening than we would proved false.  Call it honours even.

Throwing his trainers on to stage by way of introduction, it was clear this wouldn't be a conventional couple of hours of theatre.  Sat a desk he explained he'd been given an open commission to develop an audio piece for a big company, and he wanted to use the night to try out a couple of ideas and see what reaction he got, maybe modifying the work along the way.

The first was a character piece where he'd set himself the task of writing a character he didn't like.  John proved to be a self-justifying psychopath, and angry violent man heading towards an ill-judged career as a vigilante.  Funny, but increasingly sinister as the monologue revealed more and more about the man.  It definitely had potential, and McNair later explained some of John's backstory, and where the plot might be headed.

There was no proper interval, just a chance for people to take a loo break while the performer jested with the remaining audience, and was happy to interact.  The second piece required him to bring in a few different voices as he told a very personal story in two disparate and interwoven strands.  One took him back to his teenage years and faltering attempts to form a band, until he recognised that his severe lack of talent got in the way.  The second took place a few years ago when he seized upon the opportunity to work in the US for the chance to visit the home town of his musical idols, REM.  His insistence that this was a shaggy dog story (with his own amusing recollection of how he'd once thought that phrase had related to Scooby Doo...) proved correct, and the switching from one story to another was far from seamless at this stage in their development.  But both tales had a strong tension built in, especially the more recent one, and he explained at the end how they would fit together in the end.  As before, the potential is clear.

Shambolic maybe, but McNair is a charismatic presence on stage, funny, thoughtful, honest.  Sharing a sentence that had all the sense of a cocaine drenched Tory contender was hilarious, showed how the creative process works for him, and made us aware he's not afraid of ridiculing himself.  I'm sure he got lots out of the show.  But so did we, and everyone left with a smile on their face.