Taylor Mac @ Beck's Music Box,Perth (24/02/11)

Thu 24th Feb, 2011 in Gig Reviews

“Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically. The cataclysm has happened, we are among the ruins, we start to build up new little habitats, to have new little hopes. It is rather hard work: there is now no smooth road into the future: but we go round, or scramble over the obstacles. We’ve got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen.” - D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley’s Lover

He is dressed as a woman and covered in sequins from his eyes to his feet; a huge body suit that sparkles in different hues from green to purple to blue to pink, while mad red hair twists down to his shoulders. He yells to a couple in the audience (who he has just threatened to force into kissing) that they need to move and sit next to strangers. “Theatre is a collaboration!” he exclaims, “and if you do not want your vision to change you should not come to the theatre.” His words ring out with a catalytic truth – the reality of Taylor Mac is that he is a genius. His entire act is a collection of engaging anecdotes and stream-of-consciousness ramblings, interspersed with insightful observations and glued together with David Bowie and Tiny Tim’s musical catalogue. But this turmoil veils Taylor’s true purpose: he is a teacher – he wants you to think outside the box – and he will get you there no matter what.

With only his friend Lance Horn on piano and occasional ukulele from Mac, his first cabaret playing covers is Bowie-heavy and has, arguably no Tiny Tim originals. He admits that it’s because David Bowie is the ultimate cool kid and you can see that the songs are perfectly suited to his own voice and subject matter.

Mac’s baritone vibrato echoes through the haunting chorus of Soul Love, making an effortless journey through the song’s tragic tale. He jumps back out again to tell us about his childhood and how he was compared to others as a boy, notably to Jesus and Ricky Schroder of Silver Spoons fame. “It’s hard to live up to a myth!” he spits venomously, sending the audience into uproarious laughter. The schizophrenic presentation of the show helps us understand that this is a performance about the human fallacy of instinctive comparisons, our perceptions of normality and correctness. How we fail each other when we impose our desires and norms on one another: Bowie versus Tiny Tim, Mac versus Jesus, bald men versus Patrick Stewart. He drives his point home with the Silver Spoons Theme, a song about mirroring yourself in another person – an endless stream of reflections bouncing back onto one another within two silver spoons, trying to find meaning in each other.

Though he jokes and says his life is “pretty fabulous”, his tortured vocals and subject matter betray a pain and emotion present in all powerful art. He talks about not knowing his father and being sidelined as a niche artist (a term he hates), about loathing life as an actor and having no creative freedoms. With that in mind he gives us an original song about a lily that attempts to become a protagonist in a play. The lily, in order to succeed, must become a man, and so, jumps out a window. The audience chuckles at the ridiculous premise, yet the tale is typical of Mac, creating a peculiar and amusing story he makes us laugh while exposing the underlying tragedy of our position. He is a modern-day jester, revealing reality for what it is while keeping us glued to the spectacle of his cabaret.

Perhaps the highlight of the night comes after Bowie’s Fill Your Heart when he makes the audience stand and engage in the ultimate act of uncool as a tribute to Tiny Tim: a collective mime routine. It speaks volumes about his power that the audience was so willing to follow him along, chewing invisible gum, blowing invisible bubbles and finally pulling themselves inside the sphere and rocking to the sides. This is the kind of interaction that most would struggle to inspire, yet Mac’s charisma is so overpowering that he makes you forget the shame of doing something so comical because, in a collective mime routine, the one that stands out the most is the one that doesn’t follow along.

He concludes his discussion of comparisons with one final assessment. That they may be good for competition (“how capitalist”), or community to provide context, but they are usually reductive when we push our views onto someone instead of opening our mind to accept them. Our assessment should further the conversation with our curiosity instead of our judgement. And the strength of his lesson lies in its unapologetic delivery; this is not a disclaimer for his show, nor does he want to intimidate people into accepting drag, he is just making his evolved cultural view clear and teaching us what he knows. And it’s hard to argue with such intelligent theatre.