Taylor Mac

Even since they saw him at the Edinburgh Festival, Chelsea and Finton have been mithering on about Taylor Mac and how he's the best thing since size 13 sling backs. So I thought I'd better go along and see him for myself when he turned up at Bistrotheque this week.

He's not exactly drag in a traditional sense, but he does like to dress up. And his performance is definitely not drag, he likes to refer to his productions as plays.

Taylor appeared on stage with a ukulele and after a brief introduction led straight into one of the many songs of the evening. This was a public information announcement about how if you find an abandoned package on the subway you should always speak up... saying something like, "Waaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh!"

Not all of it was frivolous, in fact his lyrics are intelligent and full of observation, insight and wit. But the delivery is so fast and he races from one topic to the next so you a problem keeping up. You've no sooner focused on one idea when it's already four lines behind and he's filling your head with something else. Slow down a bit, boy!

One of the songs is about a lesbian novel written by Lynne Cheney, wife of US ultra-conservative Dick Cheney. In the book - Sisters - she imagines a world free of men where she will read to her lover as her lover does cross-stitch and they both sit cosily by the fire. To sooth our confused little English minds, Taylor asks us to substitute Lynne Cheney with Margaret Thatcher to produce an even more chilling effect. As he says, you really couldn't make this shit up. The song goes on to find Lynne meeting Saddam Hussein and the two dying peacefully by poison gas. Watch the video.

Later he did some gender fuck dialogue that led into a take on Gil Scott-Heron for The Revolution Will Not Be Masculinised. I can't remember at what point he changed into the darlingest little aqua-marine sequinned number with leopard-skin platform boots, but I remember his comment that when his girlfriends ask how he can wear such high heels, he tells them, "to you they mean oppression, but to me they mean liberation".

I kind of preferred the onstage banter to the songs, purely cos I could keep up with what he was saying. There was a great bit about channeling spirits on stage and how the ancient Greeks had such great Gods - like Zeus who would turn into a swan or a shower of gold and fuck you, while in the western world we only have an invisible God who hates us for holding hands.

As I'm sad and pervy, I also enjoyed his piece about an early morning wank where he tries desperately to find a fantasy that will work before deciding he's been in a solo relationship for so long he needs viagra to do it with himself.

The performance was over all too soon, but you can catch up with him later in the year at Reindeer, and also at Duckie this Saturday night.

www.tayormac.net