Self-destructive drunks are not my first choice of company for a good night out. But then great theatre is riddled with characters I wouldn’t want to spend time with in the real world. And in the case of The Drunk Monologues the whole, if curtailed, lifetime that is distilled into an hour does not outstay its welcome.

Canadian Diane Spodarek’s ‘Dangerous Diane’ staggers into a bright light looking for punk poet/rocker Patti Smith, who has asked DD to open for her somewhere in New York. It emerges DD is dead and the rest of the hour tracks her journey through to this moment.

With Smokey Robinson as her first role model, discovering her aspirations are limited by not being male and not being black predisposes DD to approach adult life as a misfit. Innocence and naivety clash with a quest for experience and fun that all-too-soon leads to responsibility and various form of dependency.

Smokey’s You Really Got A Hold On Me (‘I don’t like you but I love you … I don’t want you but I need you …’) bookends the tale and sums up its core theme.

In a deceptively ramshackle blend of talk, drink and song, Spodarek captures and exposes the paradox of an era and culture that has found new forms of self-imposed oppression in its quest for freedom. Was DD’s sudden demise an accident or inevitable?

Alongside Despatch (see review), the Fringe ’06 season at Bats is off to a provocative start.

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