The Adventures of Wound Man and Shirley

There's an illustration in a 14th century medical textbook of a man, wearing what is to all intents and purposes a posing pouch, with a collection of nearly 20 knives, swords, axes and maces sticking into and out of him – an aggregation of the myriad potential wounds a soldier might incur in battle. The figure has become known as "Wound Man", and it's this figure who arrives early one morning, clanking and clunking, in Shirley's hockey stick-shaped cul-de-sac to transform the gawky, depressed, gay youngster's life.

At the centre of this production is a superb one-man performance by writer Chris Goode. Sweet, vulnerable, and with a knack for the matter-of-fact humour required for a fantastical tale involving this most unlikely of superheroes, Goode's performance is worth the ticket price alone.

However, there's a gaping sore of a problem that slashes right at the heart of The Adventures of Wound Man and Shirley, namely that it's a show that tries to do too much. At times, Wound Man serves as a (literally) battle-scarred guide, leading Shirley through an inspirational fable about growing up. At others, he's a physical, cathartic manifestation of emotional trauma – "you look like how I feel", several characters tell him. More concerning is that he is also the site of an extremely dark subplot with overtones of paedophilia – overtones that are never satisfactorily resolved. Too many ideas may be better than none at all, and this is certainly a show packed with them. But it's also one held together by a strong performance rather than by a cohesiveness of its own.