La JohnJoseph: Boy in a Dress

Transdrogynous polymath succès de scandale La JohnJoseph scores a hit with this high-heeled, low-living clusterfuck of sex, class, religion, gender, identity and ideology. It’s an elegant and propulsive piece distilling three earlier memoir shows about the threat and thrills of cross-gender glamour, a conspicuously shabby Liverpool upbringing and an ill-fated but rather fabulous sojourn in New York. Imperiously gorgeous and unapologetically hyperarticulate, La JohnJoseph uses the Penny Arcade mode of very direct address, combining anecdote, cultural analysis, theatre and song, and is aided by imaginative wardrobe work (both literal and figurative), supporting performer Erin Hutching and director Sarah Chew. She doesn’t wait for dawdlers, cantering like a thoroughbred from bad stepfathers to Catholicism-as-psychedelia, dislocated subjectivity to thieving tranny cockroaches. But keep up with this incisive, witty, moving and glam piece of work and it might just help you get ahead of the game.