Beautifully performed and pitched, Boy in a Dress is a fast-moving autobiographical show recounting ‘transdrogynous’ performer La JohnJoseph’s memories through direct address to the audience, songs and even a striptease. There’s dance and illustrative movement, humour and pathos. It all holds together superbly; you can taste the quality straight away. It’s colourful, lively, fast-paced and tender, the scripted dialogue delivered with an ease and slickness. Totally captured from the very beginning, I didn’t want to miss a single word or image. There’s a directness and earthiness to La JohnJoseph’s tales as we hear of his unstable Liverpool Catholic childhood, of his mother and her marriages, and how often he was left to hold the babies (he was one of eight children). We hear of his school days, and the sanctuary of public toilets, of his spell in downtown New York, of dressing up and club-going, and of his modelling days. In a New York club one day a queen sized him up and said, ‘You’re not a drag queen, you’re a boy in a dress.’
The set is a tumble of costumes and bits and bobs amid crates and a wardrobe. The latter is used to brilliant effect for the entrances, exits and visual revelations of fellow performer Erin Hutching, such as in a living image of the Virgin Mary, who emerges, holding the Sacred Heart, to look heavenward. The set also incorporates its own visual storytelling, reflecting the recounting of the horrors of desire, and of love yet to be found, written into the graffiti of male public toilets as if they were confessional booths. La JohnJoseph has a good resonant voice and the songs are luscious. There’s even a great dress made from paper aeroplanes!
La JohnJoseph is such a willowy yet sturdy personality. Boy in a Dress is sharp and hooks you on the precariousness of life and all its absurdity. We’re lifted up. You can have nothing and have what little you have taken away from you, and still go on. Happiness can leak out in the most gloomy of places. You can pick up those shattered fragments and make yourself a crown. All about being and becoming, it’s brave, robust, clear, celebratory and to the point.