The Worst of Scottee is anything but bad

DEBUTING to a sellout crowd at St Kilda’s Theatre Works,  solo performing artist Scottee presents The Worst of Scottee is an episodic, frank recounting of a teenager in crisis.

Experienced through the medium of a photo-booth, the crowd are presented four snapshots from earlier times.

The Worst of Scottee bluntly interrogates his earlier self. He winds back the clock in an effort to explain candidly why he pretended to have AIDS (when he didn’t), stole from his Nan, lied about his best friend committing suicide and finally revealing what initiated the behaviour in the first place.

Worst of Scottee moves the audience with an earnest truthfulness that is a marvel to witness as he charts his early years from humble beginnings, beset with loneliness and emotional duress.

This honest, insightful monologue of a fat kid from the estates of London’s north west is weighted (no pun intended) with wonderfully-wicked humour, gift wrapped with an accent that thrills (can he say “Fat Allan” one more time, please?).

This true dramatic art is interspersed with song and a creative use of the photo-booth, which presents a candid interview footage of people who knew Scottee way back when, it binds past and present and offers a new source of enlightenment.

Entertaining, engrossing, at the end of the day the audience snorted. Let one person snort and the crowd laughed with you.

Like so much that goes on at Melbourne’s Midsumma festival, The Worst of Scottee touched the audience’s emotions. In the tough bits, you couldn’t hear anything, the audience was hauntingly silent in-a-gut-wrenching-riveting kind of way.

For more information on the show click here. Shows continue all week until January 25 at Theatre Works, St Kilda.