Most performers want attention when they’re on stage. Tamm Reynolds, however, gets it all the time – even when not dressed in fishnets and push-up bra as their alter ego, Midgitte Bardot. “I also like having my bush and ass out,” Reynolds adds. Before we meet at Woolwich station in London, where the artist has kindly agreed to pick me up in their car, they send me a text: “I’m assuming you know what I look like.” Sure enough, they are hard to miss. As a non-binary trans drag queen with dwarfism, Reynolds must be in a minority of one.
Yet to define Reynolds purely in those terms would be to do them a massive disservice, since they are also a writing and performance powerhouse. Three years ago, in Travis Alabanza’s queer cabaret revue Sound of the Underground, Midgitte climbed aboard a cherry-picker in order to sing a filthy blues rock tune called Hot Piss, brandishing a jug of frothy yellow liquid. The climax can’t adequately be described in a family newspaper, but it resulted in the loudest cheer I’ve ever heard at the Royal Court. Eat your heart out, Jerusalem.
