Musicals & Opera review: Prom Kween
Underbelly, Cowgate (Venue 61)
***
The book is by Rebecca Humphries, whose show Dizney Rascal was a Fringe hit in 2014, and there are plenty of Disney references here, alongside such pop-cultural touchstones as Mean Girls, Spielberg and RuPaul’s Drag Race – indeed, RuPaul (William Donaldson) serves as the show’s charismatic narrator-cum-spirit guide.
The other cast members (Humphries, Daniel Miller, Lucy Pearman and Sam Swann) energetically fill a multitude of roles, from high-school archetypes to gay icons and American grotesques. They take turns playing Matthew – an elegant concept for embodying unconventional gender identity. But the conceptual is one thing, the personal another: as a character, Matthew is devoid of personality and sensibility. Nor, despite its inspiration, does Prom Kween make any attempt to convey the lived experience of non-binary subjectivity. It’s a show about taking pride in being yourself that’s built around a blank slate, sassily trumpeting the value of self-determination yet uninterested in the specific texture of distinctively marginalised lives.
Until 27 August. Today 8:35pm