Gary Le Strange: Polaroid Suitcase, The Underbelly, Cowgate, Edinburgh
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Your support makes all the difference.Sometimes, fiction really is as strange as life. Gary Le Strange might be as self-invented as any of the Ants and Numans who once clogged up the charts, in an age when the future promised better than porno on a computer screen and shoot-'em-up games. But having interviewed the bemused post-fame Adam Ant, and been present at Gary Numan's 40th birthday party (in the lobby of a Milton Keynes hotel), I can vouch for the eerie authenticity of Waen Shepherd's creation.
Poor Gary, his backstory borrowed from those preened Eighties horrors who now spell nostalgia for many, might be reduced to playing the Fringe, but his dreams of stardom survive. Writer of the new New Romantic panto Prince Charles, and the man who asked, "Is My Toaster Sentient?", Gary's set summons up Jarvis Cocker's complaint that those who grew up in that benighted decade deserve a refund.
This lovingly written, authentically inauthentic show hardly puts a foot wrong, save the one in Gary's mouth. "I'm Japanese," he sings in gloomy cockney. "I eat raw fish and I'm allergic to cheese." I laughed a lot.
Venue 61, 11.20pm (55 minutes) to 24 August, not Wednesdays (0870 745 3083)
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