Spanglebaby, The Arches, Glasgow
The Be(a)st of Taylor Mac, The Arches

Watching Poorboy in action has, in the past, meant chasing after intriguing characters as they lead us on a dramatised quest from location to location. City streets, quaysides, a chi-chi corporate headquarters: these have all provided appropriate, atmospheric backdrops to journeys through personal/ universal turmoils - with self-knowledge a kind of tantalising Grail that might be round the next corner.

So how do the Poorboy team respond to being cooped up in the internal reaches of Arch 3? They cordon the length into separate areas and keep us on our toes, promenading to and fro until the final section where we sit at one end. Either by design or by a happy accident, this suggests the tunnel vision that amounts to obsessive behaviour in wannabe corporate high-flyer Richard White (Brian Ferguson).

Richard's brief is to oversee the creation of BetterLife.com, a virtual world where we can all - at the click of a mouse and the surrender of our credit card details - have the life we want. Online, we can even enter the lawless Red Zone and wreak any kind of havoc - muggings, murder, sexual predation - we choose without censure or reprisals. The only limits are those imposed by our finances and imaginations.

Richard, desperate to impress and achieve, talks the talk to us, his assistant, his bosses - and what a wonderful litany of glossy advertorial and motivational cliches it is.

Writer/director Sandy Thomson has wittily nailed the thrusting, go-getter's slick lingo and Ferguson delivers it up with the right flourish of briskness and brashness. It all comes unstuck, so Richard - in real "Red Zone" mode - vents his inadequacy on his youthful assistant Amy (Ashley Smith), picking on her teen-girly appearance as the flaw in his project without realising her resourcefulness - or that he's the subject for the photographic portfolio that will gain her a college place.

Richard should have junked the "how to achieve success by exploiting the public's baser instincts" manual and listened to the experiences of the talented Taylor Mac, a Herald Angel award-winner at last year's Fringe.

Decked out in what he calls "my finery" - think spangled baby-doll minis, surreal make-up with high-octane sparkle, plus skyscraper heels - Taylor evades description as a New York performance artist and declares himself a drag act. Like our own Bette Bourne, he's an unflinching witness to a host of society's ills. Monologues about distant friends and perfunctory sex, quirky ditties about homeland security and fondly-remembered ex-lovers, gossipy anecdotes and caustic one-liners are linked together by a gentle, impassioned humanity and a wry humour that can have you helpless with laughter, then overcome by an urge to weep - and ultimately left thinking, and wanting to make life better. For real, and not in some cyber-limbo.