Taylor Mac is fierce, fiercer than Christian Siriano or Amy Winehouse or any alumni of Destiny’s Child, hell, at times, fiercer than Cher, and that’s quite an icon to cross. Part of it, I’m pretty sure, is the look - in his one-person show, The Young Ladies Of…, the compelling season opener of new artistic director Bonnie Metzgar’s first season at About Face Theater, the 5′11 Taylor Mac wears a tossed Shirley Temple wig, a helter-skelter Baby Jane-style dress which looks like it was wrung out from an automated carwash line, half a pantyhose, a thong made from brassieres, boatloads of golden eye glitter, and bright-red, lip-exaggerating lipstick. Add to this a ukulele and a vaguely Southern accent that can come off as both seductive and harsh, and you have someone who looks like a cross between a washed-out Bette Davis and Heath Ledger’s Joker character in The Dark Knight, with a dash of gay pornster Chichi LaRue. Taylor Mac, physically, is both intimidating, and strangely fascinating. But more than his physicality, his work defines fierceness - it is courageous, take-no-prisoners, outrageously unfiltered, intellectually stimulating, an intriguing blend of the personal redacting and amplifying the political.
Mac calls himself a “pastiche artist” and The Young Ladies Of…, which uses as a starting point his deeply personal desire to get some semblance of knowing the father who died when he was young, is indeed a pastiche, a 90 minute rollercoaster told through monologues, some ukulele singing (mostly of the musical Carousel’s score- the film version was supposedly his father’s favorite movie), slideshows, and audience participation. But it is not your drag queen godmother’s drag queen show- Mac has been critically acclaimed not only in New York’s cutting-edge off-off Broadway scene, but also in places as disparate as Sweden and Charleston, South Carolina (at this year’s Spoleto Festival) for his delicate and successful blending of the campy, the satirical, the emotionally direct, and the politically and socially conscious. The Young Ladies Of…, like much of his work, tackles questions of gender and identity with almost harrowing precision, and it is a work that is both disturbing and rewarding. I won’t blame people for feeling uncomfortable at Mac’s unabashed baring of his emotions and vulnerabilities; at his deep anger at society’s conventions and expectations around masculinity and paternal relationships; at his mocking, repulsed recounting, through family pictures, of his Texan father’s family’s practice of feminizing the male members when they’re children to ultimately make them “real men”. But the piece also makes terrific, resonant points about our propensity to define ourselves, to mold our identities to a certain extent, whether consciously or unconsciously, on the relationships we had, we did not have, or imagined we should have had with our parents. It is also insightful around the really painful, hard-to-swallow reality that gender identity continues to be a divisive force in many parts of our supposedly open-minded contemporary society, regardless of whether we live in “Blue” or “Red” terrain.
The Young Ladies Of… feels a little redundant in parts, especially when Mac recounts the different letters from Australian women that responded to his father’s personal ad, placed while he was stationed in Vietnam during the war. But it is an extraordinary theatrical experience, and as Chris Jones notes in his review, “smart and sophisticated”, which I hope finds a Chicago audience (it was a little disheartening to see only two occupied rows at the Hoover-Leppen theater during the preview performance I attended). Mac delivers truly edgy, out-of-the-box theater, quite different from some Chicago productions that self-proclaim themselves to be cutting edge. Go see the real deal.
The Young Ladies Of… runs until October 26 at the Hoover-Leppen Theater, the Center on Halsted, 3656 N. Halsted st. Don’t miss out on the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to participate in an audience sing-along of “What’s the Use of Wonderin?” from Carousel which accompanies Mac’s delivery of a very personal, climactic monologue.
Tags: About Face Theater, Taylor Mac
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