What am I for any more? That’s the question the “Queen of Ireland”, Panti Bliss, asks in this latest solo show, which contrasts the country she grew up in, where performing in drag was a radical act, to the queer-friendly nation of recent years. With all she fought for secured, and with cross-dressing now “defanged and Instagrammed” to within an inch of its sequined life, “Why the fuck,” asks Panti – AKA Rory O’Neill – “am I still in drag?”
There are moments in If These Wigs Could Talk when audiences may find themselves asking the same question. Few drag expectations are met here. There’s no music, no song – and if Panti is camp, it’s more solitary tent than a whole row. There’s comedy, at a stretch, in the form of a choice one-liner about LinkedIn and two anecdotes distinguished less by comical incident than storytelling flair. Panti makes them entertaining, but must work to do so, selling the one about a substitute boyfriend as more outrageous than it is and ramping up the embarrassment – in the one about smuggling a dildo through security – to off-brand levels.
