Alirio Zavarce's one-man show on the nature of something he's termed "rational madness" begins in an airport. He's just flown back to Australia with a prop suitcase, and as the story reaches fever pitch, with the federal police brandishing machine guns and a gaggle of customs officials staring him down suspiciously, he stops the show. He's troubled. There's a divide between Zavarce the man and Zavarce the actor. Maybe that's the wrong place to begin. Things carry on, but it's not the last time he'll stop the show. Loco is peppered with Zavarce's asides, and the whole thing proceeds in kooky fits and starts. Jonathon Oxlade's enchanting set - a towering wall of cardboard boxes - becomes a playground. Sections fall down, some of them contain secrets, and more than a few become the canvas for Chris More's projection design. Zavarce's marriage and the twin towers of the World Trade Centre collapsed on the same day, and this is where his "rational madness" began. Everyone's a little bit loco, and sometimes we have to give in to it in order to get through. He's a beguiling, fascinating performer who's at his best engaging directly with the audience. Sasha Zahra's direction is solid, but there's a gap between the darkness and the light in these stories. These semi-autobiographical tales are told mostly in big print, and the net effect is beautifully polished, but fundamentally shallow. Like The Rabble's Room of Regret last year, this show features a plate of human faeces. But it's there to do more than just shock: it's glad wrapped, and it's a prop in a didactic little bit about the value of things.

Throughout her life, playwright and diplomat Clare Boothe Luce insatiably aimed for the top. In "Rage for Fame," published in 1997, Sylvia Jukes Morris traced how a beautiful and intelligent girl, born of humble origins, married a millionaire decades her senior; transformed herself as managing editor at Vanity Fair, wrote her hit play, "The Women," married again, to Henry Luce of Time Inc. "Price of Fame" continues the second half of this amazing story, clearly capturing the successes and pathos of a narcissist infused with shame and self-hate. ("Nobody could love me who really knew me.") Fame Clare now has, but with it came personal loss: the death of her only child; of her brother; the suicide of a close friend; the disappointment in her dysfunctional marriage to Luce, her love and enemy. Their extramarital affairs, along with Clare's schemes to extract millions, is told without censure. Those millions, later bequested to institutions and charities, also significantly benefited women entering the field of mathematics, science and engineering. The book opens with Clare's election in 1942 as a Republican congressman from Connecticut. The only female member of the House Military Affairs Committee, she traveled to Europe, visiting liberated Nazi concentration camps. She crossed the aisle to work with Democrats, and is credited with advancing 18 initiatives, including human rights, equal pay, and the rehabilitation of veterans, and the creation of the Atomic Energy Commission. No fan of FDR, she said he had created a nation of "hypochondriacs, introverts and psychotics." Nonetheless, she was a friend of his wife, Eleanor (both were advocates for civil rights).