THIS is the most personal piece of John Cooper's 40-year commitment to theatre, and sometimes, as with children, you can be too close to see the faults.

"We're finding it a very exciting challenge," he said, introducing last night's first preview performance in preparation for Drama Queen's run at the Edinburgh Fringe with its raft of songs by those rock opera hams, Queen.

Cooper's challenge increased when a company member pulled out at short notice, forcing him to re-write the script with one fewer role. These things happen - I recall an actress pulling out of my revue show after arriving in Edinburgh in my university days - but Drama Queen is a play, not a revue, and so any changes have a more damaging effect.

In the past Cooper and the A1 Theatre wing of his Stagecoach Youth Theatre York operation have taken 90-minute slots at the Fringe. This time Drama Queen is a skinny 55 minutes, and its finale is too heavy for its structure. The play never settles into its stride, its series of sceptical, cynical, punchy vignettes interspersed with choreographer Eric Carpenter's even more punchy dance routines which come across like Pan's People in a bad mood.

Cooper's writing can be evocative and moving, never more so than his musical melodrama Run Ragged, his account of life in the Victorian children's workhouse in the Bedern area of York. By comparison, Drama Queen - or should that be Melodrama Queen? - is a semi-autobiographical, bizarre account of a man coming to terms with his life through a play in which all the roles, bar the briefest cameo by Alan Crompton, are played by young women in contour-clinging leotards.

The music and lyrics of Queen inspired Cooper's musical, and indeed the life path of Queen's drama queen, the late Freddie Mercury, is as much a source for the story as Cooper's embellishment of his own journey from E.15 Acting School in the early 1960s.

The four central characters represent the four dimensions of an actress with a multiple personality, led by Angharad Ormond's Jude in innocent white, complemented by Sarah Crompton's Mandy in goody-goody pink, Stacey Johnstone's crimson Lola and Felicity Skiera's wild-eyed Luce in envious green. Later, Zoe Roberts's Sophie will join as Jude's love interest in Stagecoach's first lesbian kiss.

Drama Queen is out of sorts, twisted and rushed, forlornly searching for answers. It means a lot to John Cooper; his cast could not be more committed but something, too much, is missing.

Drama Queen,A1 Theatre Productions, Trinity Hall, Monkgate, York, until Saturday 8pm. Box office: 01904 674675

Updated: 11:59 Thursday, August 07, 2003