Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

Quite a lot of people would rather the world never heard from Dylan Mulvaney again, given she was the most hated woman among American transphobes last year for having the audacity to make a 48-second clip advertising beer on Instagram. (Remember when snowflake Kid Rock was so triggered by this he machine-gunned a few cases in fury?)

Luckily, Bud Light stood firm with her, underlining their deep-seated LGBT allyship, and helping her mental health weather the industrial scale hatestorm. Did they bollocks – they dropped her quicker than you could say ‘taste like piss anyway’.

Well, this is her full-throated, defiant, all-singing, all-dancing, all-slutdropping clapback at everything that happened, reintroducing herself as a performer with megawatt pizzazz and Broadway-storming talents. Pre-transition, she had starred in The Book Of Mormon on the New York stage, so Faghag is picking up where that musical comedy career left off – and then some.

With all the celebratory oomph you could hope for, the show tells her journey from a confused, shy young boy in San Diego overcoming obstacles, finding herself, and emerging butterfly-like to be the super-confident star you now witness on stage. 

Yet while the coming out story is writ large, there’s nuance beneath. Mulvaney’s relationship with her Catholic mum isn’t so cleanly resolved – though they are working on it - and she takes some responsibility for the Bud Light debacle, confessing she probably got caught up in her own online hype, and should have been more alert to the dangers of signing her deal with the corporate devil.

Faghag has an all-pink set straight out of Barbie – a big budget for a Fringe show that also extends to hiring Simon Callow as the voice of God – but you could never imagine Mulvaney’s fabulousness in a dingy pub back room. She greets the entering audience - young and almost all female and/or queer –  in her sky-high boots and angel wings, agreeing to every excited selfie request.

As she kicks into her story, she tells how she first projected her feminine side by being a twink – here portrayed as if it were a cure-all drug for her gender dysphoria – and there’s a surprisingly long section about her time working in Lush. Too long, truth be told.

Mulvaney is skilled at exaggerated characterisation and big brashly funny storytelling. We bury her former self and clap along to a catchy gospel number before getting into the most political section, inspired by her experiences with Anheuser-Busch, about mainstream America and ‘transpalatability’. It’s a bit of a tirade, but if not now, when? 
And it’s exactly what her audience want. 

Likewise, the proud, deliberately complicated statement of Mulvaney’s place on the gender/sexuality map serves as another rallying cry and one which ends the wildly entertaining hour.

For whatever bumps might be in the storytelling, the overwhelming positivity is impossible to resist, especially when delivered with such full-on showwomanship.
 

Review date: 10 Aug 2024
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Assembly George Square