Jason Wood in Bare Camp
20 August 2002

JASON Wood might look like a six-foot freshwater trout with his close-set eyes and shiny silver suit, but boy can he hit the high notes.

Whether he’s impersonating Pavarotti, or singing Barbara Streisand, Wood gives the upper echelons more muscle than Gloria Gaynor, without so much as reaching for his crotch.

In Bare Camp, the queenly comedian’s tribute to himself and his fabulous taste in music, Wood gives us a karaoke-style guided tour of his life and the campest CD collection you’re likely to hear this side of Hadrian’s Wall.

Effortlessly linking his full-throated take on an array of gay musical icons, from Johnny Mathis to Boy George, with the occasional backward glance at his repressed childhood, Wood has the audience swearing their allegiance to all things camp long before he’s through.

In some ways it’s hard to understand why the crowd is so entirely besotted with Wood. He’s hardly glanced around the packed room before he’s called one woman a slut, told another to watch her weight and thrown his hands up in horror at a bald man’s dress sense.

While this warbling king of camp has a giggle at the expense of almost everyone in the room, none of his hapless victims even seem to mind (or notice) that there seems to be a great deal in common between his impersonations of Gabrielle, Alison Moyet and David Gray.

Jason Wood might not be the only comedian on this year’s Fringe to bawl his way through Pavarotti’s football "hit" Nessun Dorma (the American opera-singing comic George Peña attempts the same at the Gilded Balloon) but he’s certainly the most fashion conscious.

Dusting the cocaine from his shirt, his priorities are clear: "I would do anything for comedy but, being a homosexual male, I wouldn’t have a dirty Gucci top for anything."