Performer's new autobiographical show at the Soho Theatre

‘Complicated,’ is the best – yet somehow still barely adequate – way of describing Glamrou’s relationship with their mother. There’s more than a touch of friction between a conservative Iraqi trad wife and an oversharing drag queen with a rimming kink.

In spite of this – or more likely because of it – Amrou Al-Kadhi has put huge amounts of their mother into their feminine alter-ego, depicting her as cruel, intolerant and emotionally manipulative, literally, at one point, a cartoonish villain.

Drag Mother attempts to unpick all of this, although the first half of the show has a rough, first-draft feel to it until we get to the nub of the matter.

Al-Khadhi manages to be both unsubtle about the emotions involved yet fuzzy about the details – those narrative inconsistencies are ultimately addressed, but confuse the story early doors. The performer evokes life in under-fire Baghdad, yet their teenage years were spent in Knightsbridge – with a servant! – before landing a place at Cambridge. The Eton education didn’t get a mention.

However, from the mother’s point of view all this privilege has been squandered for a seedy career in the arts, and she bluntly told her own child they were impossible to love. Is she a monster? It’s hard to say, but Al-Khadhi as much as admits to being an unreliable narrator.

Mum’s characterisation through the Glamrou persona can be patchy and superficial, her nastiness just plain blunt. For example. she dismisses white folk as ‘inbred’ several times, not with wit, just spat as an insult.

Likewise, Al-Khadhi’s commentary on their earlier life is grimly sarcastic, not allowing much room for ambiguity– though perhaps they can be forgiven for not wanting to dress up the stereotyping they endured.

Having forever had associations with terrorism thrust upon them – from teenage school projects on suicide bombers to being cast as an extremists’ associates in all manner of work, starting with Steven Spielberg’s Munich, no wonder it informs their worldview to this day.

Eventually Khadhi finds some empathy their mother – they ultimately forge a bond over designer labels and gossip –  and the show becomes all the stronger for ditching the Disney villainess portrayal.

Mum’s disdain for her son’s lifestyle is more understood after Al-Kadhi’s explains the belief that if a Muslim goes to hell, so do their parents for having failed to bring them up properly. And by the standards of almost any conservative, Al-Khadhi is going to hell. 

As if to prove the point, there are eye-opening, and possibly stomach-churning, stories about some hideous hook-ups. Although these primarily serve to show the performer’s insistence that they are in a  ‘good place’ as a dark irony.

There’s also potency to Mum’s belief that having suffered for being a woman in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, watching her son role-playing femininity, in her eyes, for giggles and the shillings of ‘guilty white liberals’ feels like ‘stolen trauma’.

Glamrou hopes for extra poignancy by singing rearrangements of bangers from the likes of Lady Gaga, Lorde and Whiney Houston, with slow tempo and lots of echo, though the effect is slightly overwrought. That one song detours into a frivolous rant about Jessie J or Rita Ora is incongruous, but the break into pop culture bitchiness is welcomed by drag fans.

Similarly, Glamrou comes out with all the swagger you expect of a drag performer, believing they belong at Maddison Square Garden and boasting of acclaimed films and memoirs. Though having the air of fictional boasts, Al-Khadhi has had a well-received Sundance entry, Layla, and a memoir, Life As A Unicorn.

This has the potential to be another revealing chapter in the exploration of Al-Khadhi’s queer Arab identity, though at the moment the truth is far more compelling that the slightly fumbled set-up.

• Glamrou: Drag Mother is at Soho Theatre at 9.15pm until Saturday before an American tour in March.

Review date: 22 Jan 2025
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Soho Theatre