The Be(a)st of Taylor Mac

Once you fall for splendiferous drag artist Taylor Mac, you’ll go anywhere with him. During The Be(a)st of Taylor Mac, a manic one-man retrospective of his work, that means trips to Edinburgh and South Carolina, detours to a couple of clubs and bedrooms, and time spent in that tense period after September 11 when we all lived on the edge. The latter is where Mac permanently resides, and this collection of intentionally discombobulated sketches, songs and streams of consciousness is meant to pop the protective “bubble of light” we’ve built around ourselves, so we can revel in the dark and glorious mess of life.

With his pixie face painted in bold swaths of red and green glitter and a “suspicious package” facilitating numerous onstage costume changes, Mac is many creatures in one. At times, his stylized drawl and highly sensitive nature recall a tremulous Southern belle; at other times, his zany energy and clever one-liners (“I’m a hag fag: I’m a gay man who hangs around with old ladies”) sound like Borscht Belt material. Throughout, he intertwines the personal and the political, criticizing globalization, homogenization and our current culture of fear while crooning and strumming his ukulele.

Although Mac is gleefully in-your-face, he’s never off-putting. In fact, when he makes a request, you’re inclined to please him. At one point, he challenged reviewers to write about his show without making comparisons. That’s easy: Mac is truly one of a kind.