The Be(a)st of Taylor Mac

Photo/Lucien Samaha

Taylor Mac comes to us in drag, green-faced and glittery, with a thickly clumped wig, but despite his eccentric act (high energy rants modulated by ukulele), don't mistake him for an alien. He's a wildman, a performance artist born in the crucible of gay nightclub basements. The Be(a)st of Taylor Mac is a messy sampler of his previous solo shows: by the end of the night (after opening "Pandora's suitcase"), he's standing in a sea of old costumes. The overall topic of this self-proclaimed "subversive jukebox musical" is to pierce what "the bubble of preparation," in which America (and, by inclusion, audiences) attempt to shelter themselves from harm by "preparing for the surprise." Two things are made clear by the bubble of light that surrounds him: first, that Taylor Mac cannot be contained by David Drake's direction, and second, that for all his mania--singing breasts and all--there's nothing particularly shocking about Taylor Mac.

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