Dylan Mulvaney’s retina-searing transtrvaganza ‘FAGHAG’ is a celebration of one woman’s gender journey that will surely provide a hit with girls’n’gays night out crowds. US TikToker and mid-size national scandal surviver Mulvaney is well aware of this: I don’t think she’s totally affecting her astonishment that so many straight men have turned up to see her (according to a show of hands, three straight men have turned up to see her, two with their girlfriends and me with my notepad).
Produced by hip team Wessex Grove, directed by Tim Jackson (‘Two Strangers’ in the West End, plus choreo for ‘Merrily We Roll Along’ on Broadway), and with a fairly chunky budget by Fringe standards, ‘FAGHAG’ is not your typical confessional monologue. While we do eventually get to the incident that made Mulvaney globally famous – a backlash that ensued in the US after she did an Instagram promotion for Bud Light – that is very much not the main point of this garish fantasia.
On a dazzlingly pink set by Tom Rogers that Greta Gerwig might think was a bit OTT, a bewinged Mulvaney is first introduced as a female angel of the Lord (the Lord being voiced by a pre-recorded Simon Callow) who is sent down to Earth and then horrified to discover that she has been placed in a male body.
Now while that bit may only have happened in an allegorical sense, the rest of the show is essentially autobiography, going from sensing she was different in her early childhood to teenage awakenings, initial embrace of a male twink identity, a job in Lush, a stint in musical theatre, an understanding that she was trans, and eventually The Incident.
There are various original songs, a fair dose of arch-eyebrowed irony, and really just industrial quantities of fabulousness. Mulvaney is energetic enough to power a continent but it’s pretty relentless and to be honest without even really getting into my boring sexuality I think I was a bit too tired and a lot too sober at 10pm to really be in its target audience. And I do think a bit more seriousness and depth could have bulked it up without compromising its sense of fun – certainly the Budweiser thing seems quite casually tossed out when it feels like it says something quite significant about the nature of America today.
However: I think it is abundantly clear that ‘FAGHAG’ has a fairly self-selecting audience and if you’re expecting a good time, high-energy, very camp night out then that is precisely what you’ll get.