The journalist and film critic Oscar Moore was fond of paraphrasing his namesake, a more famous Oscar. But he had his own sharp wit, an endearing mix of bite, bile, frightening honesty and the fragile gaiety that comes from determining to live life to the full. In 1987, Moore was diagnosed with HIV; six years later, at a New Year's Eve party, he discovered that the appalling pain in his stomach was not caused by too much coke or ecstasy, but by shingles in his guts. It was the first indication that Moore was now a Person With Aids.
Over the next two years, until his death in September 1996, Moore chronicled his life with Aids in a monthly column, PWA, in the Guardian. This was before this kind of column about terminal illness became a must-have for every newspaper, and Moore's writing was distinguished by its rage and humour, and the way he shared with the reader his journey into the heart of darkness. Quite literally, the CMV virus in his eyes ate away at his vision: "Would someone please put the lights back on."
He took you to places you had never been before: the ward of a Glasgow hospital where, as a gay man with Aids, he was treated with open disdain by the nurses; the consulting rooms of the quacks who fleece the desperate; inside the retina of his own eye, where the voracious CMV virus created a disco-bubble effect. Moore's motto was, "Accentuate the positive; accessorise the negative", suggesting a full range of designerwear to support his growing collection of pill bottles, syringes and Hickman line.
John Diamond's columns have already made the transition from page to stage and now Malcolm Sutherland has turned Moore's journalism into a one-man show, superbly performed by Pip Torrens. Does the stage version add much? To be honest, not really. Moore's words speak for themselves and turning it into a stage show only adds an immediacy.
Still, anything that brings Moore's work to a wider public and keeps Aids in the forefront of our minds is a good thing. Five years after Moore's death, the combination drug therapies that keep full-blown Aids at bay have created a false sense of security and HIV infection rates are once again rising fast.
· Until November 3. Box office: 020-7307 5060.
