In which I am the Moonfool

Dear Anna-Helena

It was lovely to meet you yesterday. I suppose it's not the usual way to initiate the whole 'critic and artist' dialogue', by snorting at each other like a pair of rutting hogs but, still, we both work at the cutting edge of our respective art-forms. Let me say that seeing your performance was the most intimate experience I've had in the past three years - especially when you undid all my shirt buttons - and I can still smell you on my hands. Wonderful.

I was wondering whether it's a breach of professionalism that spent most of last night stalking you on the internet - I was just trying to find out whether you are unattached because, frankly, I have a bit of a problem with distinguishing between reality and theatre these days. I do have a track record of ending up on stage at some point; recently, I've been kissed by many great drag queens (including Taylor Mac, which was amazing). But it was much better to have been picked out by a beautiful and talented woman.

I mean, I know you do this every night - it is part of the Titania cabaret - but when our eyes met... and I knew you were coming for me. Now, I am pretty loaded up on tablets these days, and they have tamed my libido... this is why I can do such dispassionate reviews of shows like The Illicit Thrill... but I'm not ashamed to say that be laid out in your bower was the highlight of my Fringe.

It's not just that you are into physical theatre - the way you embody the faerie is superb - or that you play the cello - I used to as well, and they say the cello is the most sensuous instrument. You take one of Shakespeare's most over familiar plays and rip it up, pluck out the sex war, and rescue Titania from being a bit-player in her own drama. 

That and the making of music through loops and vocal tricks... the cello both mournful and ecstatic, and the leaping joyously into desire and magic and roses and the audience and... me.

There, right at the back. Our eyes met. You came towards me. I grunted. You grunted. It was a snarl, a snarl of recognition, perhaps? The two spirits together in this material world. A longing to transcend the fictions of real and performed. Or is the battle between the faerie monarchs a fine metaphor for the clash between critic and artist...

But wait... I was Bottom in your play. The ass-headed fool, the pompous one who thinks he understands the stage but in fact slips into a world he cannot comprehend... and your bewitched and bewitching glamour contains me, seduces me for my dream to have no bottom.

To cling onto that moment... in your lap and I say I love you and I dream of you and... ah, that's the sound of laughter.