The Pleasure of Being: Washing, Feeding, Holding.

As far as participatory theatre (is that was this is?) goes, there aren’t many performances in which you—the sole audience member—strip naked to be bathed, washed, dried and then held by a strange man in a hotel room who feeds you chocolate on demand.

It’s an unusual, exposing experience to say the least, but one in which the means occasionally threaten to override the motive as artist-in-residence at Glasgow’s The Arches, Adrian Howells, asks you to “give yourself up” to his undivided attention. It’s his “honour” to bathe you he says, and every other interaction throughout this “deeply sensorial one-on-one experience” is his “pleasure”.

There’s very little else by way of conversation during the piece, though you’re invited to speak if you like. In fact, after the heart-thumping terror of bearing all in the bathtub, Howells is impeccably unthreatening throughout (you can wear swimwear if you prefer and everything is meticulously stage-managed for your safety and comfort).

The Pleasure of Being... certainly asks a lot of its participants, but having broken the barriers, it allows for some extraordinarily rare moments of self-indulgence and reflection whilst probing notions of intimacy and surrender: can you remember the last time anyone washed you?

Inevitably, a sense of a return to infancy pervades and though Howells points to the “hugging saint” Mata “Amma” Amritanandamayi as an influence, there’s more than a little helpless child regression theory at work here.

It's suggestive, oddly empowering and though it might feel a little like the inception of something wider and deeper, Howells’ half-hour TLC session is certainly a thrill that daubs an involuntary secret smile on your face as you stroll through the doors of Edinburgh’s Point Hotel back out amongst the unknowing general public.

For once, you’ve escaped. And that’s a pleasure indeed.