THEATRE / Fierce Love / Pomo Afro Homo - Drill Hall, London WC1

Tension is integral to theatre. But in some circumstances its absence can be welcome, particularly if the purpose of an evening's entertainment is essentially didactic. Which brings us to the combined talents of Djola Bernard Branner, Brian Freeman and Eric Gupton, otherwise known as the black gay trio Pomo Afro Homos. Their 'stories from black gay life', told as 13 sketches utilising song, dance, rap, personal history and a sliver of James Baldwin's novel Just Above My Head, have the obvious intent of transmitting experience with certain political clauses attached. For example, this is what it feels like when a religious bigot preaches at a black gay man's funeral about how he renounced his sinful homosexuality for Jesus; this is what it feels like when a black gay man decides a night's dancing is infinitely preferable to a day's campaigning. The word to emphasise is feel. What in more expert hands would inevitably be a slick, stylised exercise in 40 shades of guilt and gruesome uplift is made curiously palatable by the threesome's slangy, high-octane camp and defiantly uncluttered approach. If no single sketch truly delivers - but for a rapturous sexual reverie praising back-room hand-jobs - then no one sketch outlasts its welcome. And it sure beats watching Lenny Henry wear a frock.