There's a vicious rumour going around that Gavin Friday is a bit of a chancer - part poseur, part passion, part prune. If these rumoured constituent elements make up half the person that is Friday, then we should all rejoice, for what is good dramatic fun and fine theatrical art if it isn't a bit poncey, a tad emotional, a mite fruity? Suffering from a touch of the flu, Friday's upper range might not be there, but everything else is, so excepting a rather low-key version of Angel, this rare live outing saw the former art terrorist from Ballymun - a dying breed, I'm sure you'll agree - living and lapping it up.
Billed as a retrospective of his solo career and a run through of the soundtrack work Friday and Maurice Seezer (his musical partner of 15 years) have composed over the past 10 years, it was also an opportunity for Friday to flick through his own influences. Hence the winning mixture of Brecht, Bowie and Beelzebub - where Next and Amsterdam glammed it up with Oh! You Pretty Things and the twin horns of MacPhisto. Add in Friday's by now standard angles on decadence and dissonance (blending oh-so brilliantly in his version of Brecht's Next, where blood curdling screams intercepted tales of lost innocence in mobile army whorehouses) and you have a package easy to sneer at but extremely difficult to beat.
It wasn't all perfect; occasionally, Friday looked amateur and shaky, giving one the impression that he should play in front of audiences more. The songs were fine (including You Take Away The Sun, I Want To Live, Each Man Kills The Thing He Loves, He Got What He Wanted, King Of Trash, Falling Off The Edge Of The World), but more of the musically layered soundtrack interludes wouldn't have gone amiss.
He finished the pre-encore section with Is That All There Is? - the easy-listening personification of ennui. It's a song title that could never be asked of a Gavin Friday performance, the man who puts the art into party.
