Tarell Alvin McCraney was named Most Promising Newcomer in this year’s Evening
Standard Awards and has had two plays (The Brothers Size and In the Red and
Brown Water) on at the Young Vic this year. Should we crack open the
champagne to celebrate the arrival of his Wig Out! at the Royal Court, or
should the bottles stay on ice a little longer?
The action of Wig Out! takes place mainly in the drag “houses” of New York –
in which outcasts form new families, themselves rather likely to be
dysfunctional, under the protection of a self-described mother and father,
both male. The word “house” here chimes, not particularly ironically, with
the word as it is used in the fashion industry, though nothing is created
here beyond competitive catwalk routines in highly specialized categories
(such as Soundtrack with a Twist). Most of the characters on the stage
belong to the House of Light, an outfit perhaps past its best but offered a
chance of reclaiming its crown with the arrival of a challenge from a close
rival, the House of Diabolique – a “Cinderella Ball”, in other words a
voguing contest at the shortest possible notice, to take place that very
night.
This is a great show, for which the director (Dominic Cooke), designer Ultz
and choreographer Manwe must share credit with Penny Dyer, the dialect
coach. When was the last time a British cast did real justice to American
intonations and speech rhythms? Yet the cast’s biographies are larded with
appearances in Casualty, Primeval and The Bill, and only one performer,
Jessika Williams, is definitely imported. The energy and commitment are
extraordinary, not just in dance sequences but in the dialogue. Kevin Harvey
as Rey-Rey, Mother of the House of Light, has come up with a voice of
seething tenderness which works wonders, while Danny Sapani as Lucian,
Founding Father, lightly invokes the presences of Robert De Niro and Marlon
Brando to make clear that refusing his offers would not be a sensible
option.
In all this welling-up of theatrical excitement, the only defective element is
the script. The ropey actual play. The drag houses of New York, mounting the
equivalent of Inigo Jones masques on a food-stamps budget, are real, though
perhaps they had their heyday in the 1980s. They were the subject of Jennie
Livingston’s extraordinary documentary Paris Is Burning (1990). As the film
makes clear, drag in this environment isn’t centrally about gender but about
incarnating the impossible. One of the prescribed categories of the contests
is “executive realness”, in which people who may never have had a job
demonstrate that they can wear a suit and carry a briefcase with the
required swagger (one contestant explains that he always carries that day’s
Wall Street Journal – this is Method voguing). It’s hardly news that
clothes, which used to be regarded merely as indicators of status, have
become for many people substitutes for that status, but few have followed
this logic as far as the people in the film. You have a chance of being
“real” only when the spotlight hits you and you get to throw your shapes in
front of a crowd, under the eyes of the judges.
Glamour produces a redeeming timeless moment (voguing draws its notion of the
iconic from the frozen instants of still photography). It doesn’t offer a
sustaining medium – but the play is too intoxicated with performance to
allow for anything much in the way of backstage lives, just as Ultz’s design
turns the whole acting area into a catwalk. A certain amount of back story
is provided in the form of stylized monologues delivered under a spotlight,
most of them beginning with the words “My grandmother wore a wig . . .”.
All of the play’s characters inhabit this micro-subculture except Eric (Alex
Lanipekun), a light-skinned black man who meets Nina (Nathan
Stewart-Jarrett), first child of the House of Light, on the subway, and he’s
not exactly from another planet (we’re soon in “Oh, do you two know each
other?” territory). Eric is gay, it’s just that he is drawn to the masculine
type. Still, it turns out that there is compatibility between the two,
despite appearances. Nina likes to take the lead in bed, and Eric doesn’t
mind following. Nina brings Eric along to the House of Light, a move which
seems to have more to do with the playwright’s desire for conflict than a
character’s desire to take things further with a promising partner.
It can be tiresome when a play trades relentlessly in issues, but strange all
the same when one abstains from the opportunities it seems made for (or even
made of). In Wig Out!, reality is transcended without being properly
mentioned. Is America a racially divided society? The possibility is skated
over. There are nuances (Eric is a prize in part because of the lightness of
his skin) but no barriers. The challenge from Diabolique is delivered by
Loki (the alarmingly flexible Drew Caiden), a white youth who used to be
part of the House of Light, but he is treated simply as a defector. It’s as
if race isn’t allowed to be a divisive factor. Rich forms of fantasy
transform the given world, impoverished ones merely dissolve it.
All the characters on stage are gay, and again there are ripples (that
mismatch, productive or threatening, of sexual persona and favoured act) but
no treacherous tides. Paris Is Burning shows us at least some people who
want sex-change surgery, but Nina’s identity is stable. He’s the one who
gets to launch into the grand old tune of I-am-what-I-am,
ain’t-gonna-change, get-used-to-it. The film also takes drug use for granted
as an integral element of this world, an indispensable prop for fantasy
lives. Tarell Alvin McCraney’s mother was addicted to crack when he was
growing up in Miami, but in this sanitized New York everyone is clean.
A “house”, whatever else it is, is a place to live, but words such as “rent”,
“job” and “money” don’t put in an appearance. The House of Diabolique
certainly disposes of enough space to mount a fashion spectacular. Nina
seems to have an apartment of his own, since he takes Eric there for sex,
which makes his financial position and his dependence on the House even more
mysterious. These details aren’t important in themselves, but they become
important when it seems that no one has thought them through.
The only reference to the source of any of the finery on show is the
commentary on Rey-Rey’s Cinderella Ball outfit given by the Three Fates
(Holly Quin-Ankrah, Kate Gillespie, Jessika Williams), the trio who act as
chorus and sometimes deliver stage directions: “Pumps! / Hundred and
forty-five dollars! / Dress! / Balenciaga . . . / Twenty-five hundred
dollars! / The Mastercard she boosted to buy all this shit . . . /
Priceless!”. The Fates themselves are dressed to kill when they deliver
these lines, and presum-ably they don’t go shopping with their own money,
either. They sing in delicious close harmony, providing much of the pleasure
of the show – but they have no place in the world of the play. Other
characters may have grandly referential names (such as Deity) but they have
a function to perform in the House (DJ in Deity’s case). The Fates only
exist on the symbolic plane. Or are we supposed to think they live in the
House? Drag artists and women, female performance and female biology, don’t
co-exist well in the same space.
A great artist such as Pedro Almodóvar can make no distinction, in All About
My Mother at least, between those born in a female body and those who
achieve or impersonate one, by regarding all profound experience, love and
loss, as essentially feminine. In Wig Out! McCraney attempts no such
balance, and it is the biological women who are treated as unreal. The Fates
ogle Eric, as if to make his attractiveness official, but they have no
desires of their own. Why would straight women gravitate to a place that
ignores them, under the ambivalent protection of a misogynist “father”?
Lucian’s drive, in and out of bed, is to put the female element in its
place.
The Three Fates by their singing give Wig Out! some claim to be considered a
musical. Certainly they make an invaluable contribution to the energy of the
show every time they hit a note. They’re in the moment, attuned to each
other in pitch and timing, rather than moving their mouths to match a dead
recording. For all that, their presence is an obvious act of bad faith. The
artificial outranks the real – that’s the bedrock assumption of drag. It
follows that the sacred monster is superior to the woman of flesh and blood,
and mere singing can’t compete with the glory of lip-synching. Which isn’t
actually the message that patrons of the Royal Court will take home with
them. The Three Fates of bad faith do more than their fair share to carry
the evening.
Tarell Alvin McCraney
WIG OUT!
Royal Court Theatre Downstairs
Adam Mars-Jones’s novel, Pilcrow, was published earlier this year.
