Oliver Reed: Wild Thing

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What is it about Oliver Reed that we find so fascinating? Why, nearly 20 years after his booze-soaked death in a crappy Irish bar in Malta, are we unable to turn our gaze from the "last of the great shit-kickers"? It's a question Rob Crouch answers in charismatic, shit-kicking style in this bravura one-person performance.

Everything about Crouch's performance here screams big. Physically and vocally, Crouch is big. He drinks big (I really hope it's not all real), and roars witticisms and ribaldry. But he oozes charisma, too, drawing us into his hail-fellow-well-met aura, regaling us with showbiz stories, making us part of the Reed party train. And, slowly, the wheels come off. "Are you not entertained?" he bellows, becoming more and more boorish as the whiskies add up. "You want me to get drunk, get into a fight and fall of the edge of a dustbin," he observes. It's true. Crouch as Reed absolutely plays to the crowd – and tonight that's us. Like the mob in the Colosseum, Reed satisfies a nihilistic urge that it's safer for us to have someone else play out than risk self-destruction. What brutes we are.

This isn't a performance without flaws. If anything, it's too big; too one-note. The odd moments where Mike Davis and Rob Crouch's script allows for other voices provide welcome variety. Most striking is a simmering, terrifying rendition of Bill Sikes in Oliver; most poignant is Reed's hyper-critical father, giving a stolen glimpse of Reed's stuffed-down fragility. In the main, though, it's on or off with not much in between. Maybe Reed never stopped for a breather, but Wild Thing might be more dramatic if Crouch were forced to.