An Insignificant Man

Pearse Centre

***

Smilin' Kanker looks like the gentlest corpse you could ever meet, with his shy smile and soft voice, ghost-white face and hollow eyes, a pink feather boa and a bottle of poppers hanging medallion-like from his neck. His new show is about love, a condition about which he rhapsodises, waxes anecdotal and sings, but which essentially remains for him an undiscovered country. Smilin' is alone.

Through charmingly vulnerable reminiscences and splinters of tasteless humour (he exhibits dance steps learned via a correspondence course with the Ceausescu School of Contemporary Dance), Ciaran O’Keeffe’s alter-ego reveals a melancholic romantic soul, invisible in clubs, pickled in drink, disastrous in saunas, but with his eyes on a septillion stars.

Smilin’ allows himself some insight into unattainable beauty – even a mid-performance search comes up empty – and it seems more truthful than a number of karaoke torch songs. Next to the tragic grandeur of his romantic isolation, any relationship would seem banal, and in this contentedly lonely display, Smilin’ Kanker actually seems in love with it. Ends Sep 20