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Lady Bunny's Trans-Jester at Soho Theatre 18 February 2017
bitter69uk posted a photo:
We’re spoiled rotten in London at the moment when it comes to drag queen aristocracy. Last Sunday we all assembled to see Joey Arias. Later in the same week Lady Bunny – the veteran American drag legend (from New York via Chattanooga, Tennessee) with the lacerating wit and truly filthy mouth – came to town. Saturday night we caught her latest one-woman show Trans-Jester at The Soho Theatre – and she rocked the freaking house! This was the first time I’d seen Bunny onstage since she performed at the little basement Freedom theatre on Wardour Street in the nineties – and she didn’t disappoint. Bunny’s sold-out Soho Theatre residency is from 14 – 25 February. After her big opening (insert your own joke), she was stricken with laryngitis and had to cancel a few gigs last week. Luckily, Bunny recuperated in time for our night and was on scathing form!
Her show crammed-in all the huge wigs, rapid-fire Laugh-In-style jokes, X-rated parodies of pop hits by the likes of Bruno Marrs, Kesha and Adele and sequined costumes you’d imagine. But Trans-Jester also zeroed-in on pointed and unvarnished social commentary, with Bunny lashing out against political correctness and the sanctimonious queerer-than-thou, language-policing brigade (something her NYC peer Penny Arcade also touched on with her Longing Lasts Longer performance piece at The Soho Theatre last year).
For example: Bunny defiantly reclaims the word “trannie”, which is now a verboten slur in many circles. She also tore strips off Caitlyn Jenner as a supposed trans ambassador, when Jenner is a clueless Republican stooge who’s repeatedly voiced opposition to gay marriage. And as Bunny pointed out, Glamour magazine anointed Jenner Woman of the Year “when she hadn’t even been a woman for a year!” Bunny ridiculed the concept of “trigger warnings” and the various forms of “shaming” (Bunny is a self-professed slut – especially for Puerto Rican dick – and pointed out that we really need “prude shaming” far more than we do “slut shaming”).
Bunny employs viciously self-mocking humour in the tradition of Phyllis Diller and Joan Rivers. Claiming she consulted a doctor to request a sex change, he asked, “From what to what?!” and then shrugged, “Well, if you want to be a woman I guess we could start with a breast reduction.” Instructing Bunny to undress, the doctor then gasped, “Whoever did your first sex change made a real mess!”
In one of my favourite bits Bunny solemnly announced she wanted to pay tribute to an iconic musical legend who died last year, one beloved by generations of gays who really showed us to how embrace and be ourselves. Everyone was thinking: Bowie? Maybe Prince? And then she declared, “Lynn Anderson!” to a sea of blank expressions (which made her snap, “Ageist!”). Except for me – I gasped with pleasure! Bunny meant the old-school big-lunged and bouffant-haired Country & Western diva of “I Never Promised You a Rose Garden” fame. (Bunny is a good Southern hillbilly gal, remember). She then launched into a sing-along version of “I’ve Been Everywhere.”
I also loved Bunny’s analysis of the acronym LGBTIQA letter by letter. The “A”, she noted, stands for “asexuals”. “Why do*we* get stuck with them?” she asked.
Afterwards Lady Bunny held court in the bar upstairs. We quickly ambushed her for a red-hot camera session.
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