Some performances were just meant to be. It was Christmas 2003 and actor Tam Dean Burn found himself reading an article in Time Out about books to look out for in the year ahead. One of them was Venus as a Boy by Luke Sutherland, the Orkney writer and musician with whom Burn had performed at a launch event for Jelly Roll, his first novel.

Having just completed a starring role in his own adaptation of Louise Welsh’s The Cutting Room at the Citizens’ Theatre in Glasgow, Burn was on the lookout for a new novel to stage and liked the sound of the Sutherland book. Trouble was, the book wasn’t out yet, he had lost Sutherland’s number and didn’t have an easy way to contact him. He was just thinking about calling the publisher when he walked straight into Sutherland coming down the stairs of the number 55 bus to Soho.
“There was something almost fated about it,” says Burn, still reeling from the good fortune. “We didn’t have time to exchange numbers, but we agreed to meet the next day in the Bricklayer’s Arms.”

There, Sutherland gave him a proof copy of the unpublished novel and Burn saw instantly it was what he was looking for. The life-story of a promiscuous young man from South Ronaldsay, it’s a street-wise vision of a social misfit whose escape to London allows him to exploit his one great talent: the ability to bring intense sexual satisfaction to everyone he sleeps with. We never learn his real name, but Cupid, Venus as a Boy and Désirée seem to fit.
“As soon as I read it I knew it would be perfect for the stage,” says Burn. “It’s in the first person, it’s a death-bed confession and goes back over his life from Orkney to dying in a bedsit in Soho.”

For those whose view of the Highlands and islands is misted over with sentimental clichés, Sutherland’s book is a jolt into the 21st century. The landscape from which Désirée escapes is as dysfunctional as any inner city, riven by racism, homophobia and bullying, made ugly by broken homes and arson. By contrast, the transsexual brothel in Soho where he ends up seems like a haven of companionship and support. It is here, though, that Désirée becomes fatally ill and, in a mythic, magical-realist twist, watches his skin turn
gold.

For all his talents as an actor, the shaven-headed Burn is not the first person you’d imagine in the role of a beautiful young man with the gift for melting male and female hearts. But the conceit of the play, like the novel, is that Désirée's story is being retold from recordings left behind. This allows Burn to maintain a theatrical distance. “The cards he leaves in phone boxes say, ‘Gorgeous Orcadian boy, up for anything’ and if it was a movie I wouldn’t get the part,” he laughs. “But I start as myself paying tribute to him and can come in and out of character.”

Burn’s good fortune didn’t end with his chance meeting on the number 55. Sutherland himself took an interest in the project and offered his skills as a musician. Not only is he an accomplished author but also the founder member of Long Fin Killie, with whom he released three albums, a sometime player with Mogwai and, since 2002, a member of Music AM. Initially the plan was for him to play live at the St Magnus Festival in Orkney in June and make a recording for the rest of the tour but, with the involvement of the National Theatre of Scotland (NTS), things went swimmingly enough to persuade Sutherland, who features as a minor character in the book, to stick with Burn for the whole run.

“On the last development week, everyone saw how powerful it was to have him as a presence,” says Burn, whose tour follows Désirée’s route south from Orkney through Ullapool to Edinburgh and Soho. “He is exploring the characters through music, bringing musical motifs to each of them, using loops which he creates live and then builds on top of with guitar and violin.”
With the NTS presenting Alan Cumming in The Bacchae in the Edinburgh International Festival, Venus as a Boy is the company’s contribution to this year’s Fringe. After the domestic surrealism of Realism and the military pageant of Black Watch last year, Burn’s intimate production further illustrates the range of the company’s work. “It wouldn’t have happened without the NTS,” says the actor, who also starred in John Byrne’s hit stage adaptation of Tutti Frutti. “What’s great is you can be in Tutti Frutti and it’s a huge big number and then be in this two-man show. They’ve been really good in making it as unpressured as possible and I’ve been able to concentrate on being an artist.”