Gig review: Taylor Mac

Published on Friday 11 June 2010 21:22

TAYLOR MAC: COMPARISON IS VIOLENCE, OR THE ZIGGY STARDUST MEETS TINY TIM SONGBOOK **** THE ARCHES, GLASGOW

ACCORDING to the Mayan calendar, we're a mere two years from apocalypse, prompting Taylor Mac to address one of his more burning issues, the bugbear of comparison.

Or rather, given that the spectacularly sequined drag artist is feeling somewhat burnt-out after an exhausting run of his epic, off-Broadway smash, The Lily's Revenge, the order of the prophecies is this appealing cabaret of cover songs.

Greeting comparison as a painful slight upon his uniqueness, this endlessly self-reinventing, generously self-deprecating artist is toying with the most oft-applied description of him as "Ziggy Stardust meets Tiny Tim".

Underscored by tracks from the classic glam-rock apocalyptica of David Bowie's The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust with the more modest back catalogue of the ukulele-strumming Tim, this show is at once a declaration of self and an honest acknowledgment of Mac's artistic lineage – Hedwig and the Angry Inch is cited as an obvious yet nevertheless pivotal influence upon his nascent drag identity.

Backed by Lance Horne on keyboard, the New Yorker ripped through tracks like Suffragette City with snarling diva abandon, splicing a mini-medley of Tiny's signature tune Tiptoe Through The Tulips with Starman.

More affecting were the stripped-down numbers, a slowly measured Heroes dedicated to the homosexual couple recently imprisoned in Malawi.

Such moments, alongside a touchingly clumsy but sincere expression of support from Mac's uncle, seasoned his delightfully mischievous repartee, which approached its zenith in an uproariously funny e-mail correspondence he participated in regarding Jesus and male-pattern baldness.