Of all the vulnerable people who have been sideswiped by gender ideology, the group that incites least popular sympathy is drag performers. This, of course, is hypocritical. Those of an authoritarian disposition (policemen, armed forces personnel) always love a good drag show. And show me a 6ft hairy-chested, rugby-playing zoo-keeper, who regularly dices with disfigurement due to working proximity to captive animals, and I’ll show you someone who always asks hopefully: “Is it a fancy dress party?” because it will give him a chance to dress up as a woman. Or, as he terms it: “A right slapper.”
And there it is. The nub of the issue. Cross dressing, from Shakespeare’s comedies to pantomime dames, is a respected part of the British theatrical tradition. But in a Western culture that values individuality, what we truly respect is characterisation. And even the sketchiest Widow Twanky played by an alcoholic former soap star in a third-rate Aladdin in rural nowheresville (okay, I mean Lincolnshire) has a back story of sorts and her own, at times inconvenient, point of view.
According to the 18th-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant, human beings should be treated as an end in themselves and not as a means to something else. I’m depending a bit on memory here, but I believe he went on to explain that people (and by later extension, animals) exist from their own side. That’s how I remember it, anyway, and it was a moral argument that made a strong impression on me as an undergraduate. Granny Weatherwax, the truculent old hag who stalks through the novels in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series, balefully insisting that kings and peasant farmers alike must do the right thing, however distasteful, put it another way: Don’t treat people as things.
Drag shows, frequently, fail this test. The right slapper wiggling her prosthetic bits in front of a rowdy, late-night crowd may well be serving the interests of the audience, and those of their creator too, but she does not exist meaningfully as a character from her own side. Ask her to step outside that frame, and tell her story of how she got to that place, and the answer might well be discomforting: I was an abused child. I was taken into care. The man who pockets the money I earn from parading my sexuality is someone I used to think of as my boyfriend.
‘Womanface’ is what feminists call it, drawing parallels with the now unacceptable ‘blackface’. In the 1970s a television programme called The Black And White Minstrel Show, in which a troupe of white performers blacked up to perform outdated banjo routines, was a staple of Saturday night BBC entertainment. The minstrels thus characterised (and it’s even difficult to describe them without falling into language that would rightly get me cancelled if I used it) did not exist from their own side as Afro-American performers — merely as white projections. And it is that — and not elaborate arguments about whether Laurence Oliver had the ‘right’ to play Othello — which seals the deal for me about their ultimate deep offensiveness.
And yet. And yet… if somewhere out there, a creaking minstrel show is touring seaside matinees to an audience of sleepy nonogenarians, I still say leave them be. This is because I value freedom of artistic expression. I value the freedom of entertainers to create work that I find stupid, insulting and offensive.
And I feel exactly the same about the worst sort of drag artiste — even the bilious ones dripping mother-hatred and misogyny. I hate what you do. I’m fine with you doing it.
And this means, despite coming out publicly as a hardline terf at what was possibly the scariest moment to do so (early 2021 and therefore pre-Forstater), I look askance at recent attempts by some American States — the Republican flyover ones — to legally regulate drag performances. Panicky law is frequently bad law. And a law which forbids "sexualized performances and drag shows in the presence of a minor” would incriminate most of the output of the fondly remembered BBC Light Entertainment Department.
The signs are that this anti-drag effort, mostly, won’t come to very much. A Texan bill which would have restricted the "exhibition or representation, actual or simulated, of male or female genitals in a lewd state" as well as "the exhibition of sexual gesticulations using accessories or prosthetics that exaggerate male or female sexual characteristics" was struck down by a federal judge on Sep 1 on free-speech grounds.
But that such a plethora of state legislation has erupted in America speaks volumes about the anti-drag groundswell that’s out there. And for that we have to thank our old friend gender identity ideology. Or, more specifically, the monster of inappropriate content that is Drag Queen Story Hour.
Which isn’t about drag at all. It’s about normalising gender ideology with kids.
Personally, I think that if you wish your beloved child’s head to be filled with troubling nonsense about being born ‘in the wrong body’ — at an age when they should be pretending to be a fire engine like a normal person — then your parenting skills leave a lot to be desired. But it’s your call, I suppose.
Of course, not all drag performers are the same. Some are fully-paid-up members of the gender wackadoodle club — but many are not. The Ladyboys Of Bangkok (Bridlington Spa, Sep 13, £23 & £25) make it clear in their advertising blurb that in their fun-filled shows they are men impersonating glamorous women. They’re getting sleazier but, rightly or wrongly, the stunning visuals sweeten the pill. In that respect, a chorus line of men impersonating beautiful women is no better or worse than a chorus line of beautiful women. It’s variety entertainment, not Twelfth Night. Take it or leave it.
I feel pretty much the same way about international award-winning Velma Celli. The larger-than-life diva, who sans make-up is merely a Yorkie called Ian Stroughair, is very good at what he does. His upcoming show at the Theatre Royal (God Save The Queens, Sep 15, £15 & £20) celebrates big-voiced chantoosies like Adele, Amy Winehouse, Annie Lennox, Florence Welch and Leona Lewis, as well as gender-nonconforming males such as Freddie Mercury. He’s a longstanding York resident and we’re lucky to have him.
What’s On Sep 9-15
I’ll be honest. I feel MacBethed out. The shortest of the Shakespeare’s tragedies (I personally think the version we have is cut, possibly by the Bard himself for reasons now lost to us) rattles along at a fair pace and because of this is frequently given to schoolchildren to study. High-falutin’ justifications can be offered for the frequent staging of the Scottish Play (the zeitgeist etc) but in my view they’re mostly financial. It’s always on the school syllabus somewhere, and thus performances will be underwritten by a reliable audience of school parties.
Shakespeare North’s Macbeth, which opens tonight at the new theatre in Prescot, Merseyside, and runs until Sep 23 (£21.60-£48), is a big-hitting co-production between English Touring Theatre, Northern Stage and Theatres De La Ville De Luxemboug. One interesting sidenote is that they invited interdisciplinary artist Paul Harfleet to create some work around The Birds Of Macbeth. He uncovered some interesting thoughts about the role our feathered friends play in the text:
“Birds make frequent, and often noisy, appearances in Macbeth. There are sparrows, eagles, ravens, ‘martlets’ (house martens), owls, falcons, crows, chickens, kites, ‘maggot-pies’ (magpies), choughs, rooks, and wrens. They croak, breed, haunt, shriek, scream, clamour, tower, hawk, kill, wing, rouse, fight, swoop, and, in the case of a little ‘howlet’ missing its wing, provide an ingredient ‘for a charm of powerful trouble’ brewed by the weird sisters.”
Harfleet is best known for his Pansy Project, which involved planting pansies at the sites of homophobic and transphobic abuse. Whether those two things should be lumped together (same-sex attraction is same-sex attraction however you identify) is an argument for another day. But his Birds Can Fly project, in which he dons the plumage of iconic birds, has resulted in a wonderful series of illustrations entitled Gentle References which you can see here. His Macbeth drawing workshop for children is on Sep 15, pay what you can.
Another piece which finds a reliable audience is Townsend Productions’ The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, also on at Shakespeare North this week. Neil Gore’s solo show is a musical adaptation of Robert Tressell’s bitter tale of how underpaid workers subsidise the lives of the bourgeoisie. Tressel’s novel is a staple of socialist literature and was much-appreciated by Labour MPs when performed in Parliament in 2018 as part of a protest against that year’s Tory budget. It’s sold out in Prescot but tours across the North this Autumn including Square Chapel, Halifax, Sep 28 (£13 & £15), theatre@41 Monkgate, York, Oct 4, The Lantern Theatre, Sheffield, Oct 10-17, £5-£12, Marsden Mechanics, Nov 16, £10-£12 and Seven Arts, Leeds, Nov 23 & 24, £10.
Back on the right side of the Pennines, the year-long LEEDS Year of Culture 2023 festival shines a spotlight on aspects of the city’s past which are in danger of being forgotten. In the 1950s Jewish residents numbered about 30,000 and according to The Palgrave Dictionary of Anglo-Jewish History until as late as the 1970s, Leeds still had the highest proportion of Jewish population of any British city. I caught the tailend of this in the early 1990s when working as a temp. I was summoned to a small family business on the northern ringroad — something to do with the textiles trade — to do a few hours’ typing and quite honestly it was the most Jewishly Jewish workplace I’ve ever been in!
Meet Me At Cantors, written by Anthony Clavane and Mike Levy and directed by Tash Hyman, explores the joy and social lives of Jewish teenagers in 1950’s Chapeltown. The show has been inspired by interviews with some of Leeds’s older Jewish residents, for whom Cantors fish and chip shop (which is still going) was the place to be. Riley Theatre, Sep 10, £7 & £10.
The Leeds Jewish population mostly originated from Eastern Europe in the late 19th century and on a related theme, you can catch Klezmer-ish at Victoria Hall, Settle, Sep 10, £21, and the classical Trio Shaham Erez Wallfisch at St John’s Church, Sharrow, on Sep 15 as part of the Ripon International Festival On Sep 15, £22.
Another notable homegrown effort is By George! — another fish-and-chip-shop musical. (I dunno, you wait all year for a fish-and-chip-shop musical and two come along at once.) Written by Richard Sykes, and performed by Woodhouse Musical Theatre Company, it features strong roles for older actresses as well as some regrettably strong language as the fat begins to sizzle. Lawrence Batley Theatre, Sep 13-16, £12-£22.
And Manic, Rainer Greifer’s brave and I believe important show about the thorny issue of sexual consent, is on at Theatre Deli on Sep 15, £8.50 & £10.50. I won’t say too much about it now because I have a review ticket.
I’ll end with a rare treat. Matthew Bourne’s Romeo & Juliet, set to Prokofiev’s ballet score (reorchestrated by Terry Davies) visits the Alhambra Theatre, Bradford Sep 12-16, £23-£48. Also at Sheffield Theatres, Oct 3-7, £15-£56. Move quickly, they’re selling fast.
Liz x