So let's get the elephant out of the room first. Irish actor and playwright Neil Watkins' Fringe Festival tour de force has a title distinctly out of place in Western Australia's family newspaper, hardly a line in it I could quote in this piece.

Watkins' apparently autobiographical monologue takes him from Dublin to New York to Helsinki, from his grandparents' council flat to Manhattan cruise bars, from the company - real and imagined - of celebrities to many, many lonely, perhaps suicidal, nights with violent porn, weed and poppers.

He hangs out with gurus and shamans, gay studs, Finnish skateboarders and, most of all, his own alter ego (and Alternative Miss Ireland winner) Heidi Konnt. It's savage, obscene, confronting material and I issue every imaginable warning about content.

So why is this a candidate for best show at this year's enormous Perth Fringe? Because it's a beautifully written, directed and performed work in the great tradition of Irish theatre and literature. Composed entirely in verse, and recited with unhurried grace by Watkins, the formal poetry of the language both undercuts and accentuates the sordid world it describes.

Watkins' spare elegance of physical expression - though his eyes tell a thousand stories - draws your attention to words and the cadence of his telling them with remarkable clarity and definition. His oratorical skill is so complete that for long periods you forget you are listening to a poem, until a beautifully placed rhyme or beat brings you back into the rhythm of the language.