NOT AT ALL A DRAG…
Candy-coloured prettiness frames a 1890s world, of bored girls in flounces longing for escape from guardians, lovesick young men not averse to heiresses, and a powerful but problematical lady of mature years .No, not Oscar Wilde’s evergreen Earnest: this is the broader and once beloved contemporaneous comedy by Brandon Thomas. Being a bit lower down the class scale – a city clerk – he had even more reason to laugh at the idle rich. So, desperate for a chaperone in order further their suits, in his original the lads get a male friend Fancourt Babberley to play Charley’s aunt from Brazil…
Being in the vicinity and always up for the inventive Watermill, I was curious to see whether in our jntemperate age of gender-police, MtF drag – bloke in a frock – could still be funny for its own sake. Late to the party, as I ws away, but a week left of performances, so felt it worth mentioning to anyone who can get to the Watermill and has a taste for not only half-forgotten cultural oddities but for reflection – without the endemic hostilities and tantrums – on the notion of “queer theory” and its social history.
For Rob Madge – who wrote the engaging show My Son’s a Queer But What Can You Do – has tweaked this Victorian joke with modern glee, changing the emphasis to make the girls the plotters , and Babberley their uncle’s butler. In an estimable spirit of just having good fun, the adaptor offers plenty of other twists and gags, adds exuberant 21c swearing, gen-Z fist bumps and jargon, and knowing jokes on Victorians themselves. The four young people and their elders dart around with gleeful absurdity, and Max Gill as Babbs plays it with a dragqueen dryness which wars with the real feelings of a chap who only blossoms in costume and the mystery of gender-switch. Indeed the play ends with more than a nod to the i-am-what-I-am motto of La Cage Aux Folles, and sharp clear reference to what would really have awaited Babbs and the sex-adjusted paramour he finds in the denouement.
But the point is that it’s fun, full of fine silliness alongside the undercurrent of lgbtq+ anger. They’re all exuberantly in it though a special mention to Yasemin Özdemir”s Kitty for top eyebrow ‘n ankle work.
Looking up the play’s history I feel I should share with you that Charley’s Aunt was made in the Soviet Union in 1975, in China in 2015, and that Indian versions like Moruchi Mavshi have been performed ever since 1947. I would give quite a lot to see any of them , and work out how much queer-theory they relate it to…
watermill.org.uk to 15 Nov
theatreCat 