Ni Mi Madre, Pleasance Dome ★★★★
Philip Larkin offered a famously pithy assessment of parents’ impact on their offspring’s future lives. It’s one that Brazilian/Ecuadorian/Italian/Dominican writer and performer Arturo Luíz Soria would no doubt sympathise with – at least partly – in the solo show he’s built around memories of his mother. In fact, Ni Mi Madre is very much the older woman’s show: Soria transforms himself into Bete, the larger-than-life diva, harridan and force of nature who raised him, taking us through her three husbands and countless kids, her extravagant neediness and her vanities, and in the middle of it all her queer son – Arturo himself – who poses his own particular set of problems.
It would have been easy to create a misery memoir of misunderstandings and disregard, but thanksfully, Ni Mi Madre is a far subtler, even shiftier show. Bete is a monster, sure, but she’s also a loving, sometimes doting mother, and young Arturo clearly feels affection alongside the inevitable alienation. And it’s only through his restless, high-energy and often guffaw-inducing portrayal that darker themes begin to emerge: of migration and cultural clashes, of preconceived identities, of self-expression and self-fulfilment, whatever the cost. And, hovering behind all the mayhem, the ghostly figure of Bete’s own mother, and the quiet abuse she meted out on her daughter because of her light skin.
Soria is a deeply charismatic performer, grabbing the audience as his maternal alter ego and refusing to let go, no matter how brutally outspoken the woman’s assertions grow. He struts and preens, cavorts to Cher and Gloria Estefan amid designer Stephanie Osin Cohen’s flower-drenched set, positively revels in the woman’s life-loving dynamism while pointing up its fallout for his childhood – and yet, of course, demonstrating her defining impact on his own performing prowess. Ni Mi Madre is both a joyful celebration and an unflinching condemnation. And ultimately, it’s a show about acceptance and reconciliation, made all the more moving as Soria steps out of Bete’s costume and identity at the play’s quiet conclusion. But getting to that quiet moment of self-awareness has been really quite a ride.
Bi-Curious George: Queer Planet, Pleasance Dome ★★★★
Across the other side of the Pleasance Dome, and at about exactly the same time, another deeply queer but very different kind of show unleashes its joyful energy. Decked out in jungle fatigues and snazzy socks, drag king Bi-Curious George (pictured above, by James Klug) has a definite Attenborough vibe going on, and he guides us through queerness in the natural world of animals, plants and even fungi – from gay penguin couples fostering unwanted eggs to slow snail hermaphrodite sex (and a bit of unfortunate hormone spearing). It’s all gloriously silly but also deeply informative, and George’s increasingly ridiculous though beautifully imagined costumes – a graceful toadstool with tutu and parasol is a particular highlight – add to the show’s sense of playful, inclusive fun.
He’s a captivating performer, too, with a liberal dose of warm audience interaction (entirely optional, he reassures us) and a nice line in remixed pop lyrics, not to mention a few well-aimed jabs at Piers Morgan. And while at times Queer Planet might feel – inevitably – a little like a catalogue of animal queerness, there’s a serious message here, too – one about gender and sexual diversity among other species, in an unapologetic richness that puts human binaries to shame. If you want to know more about dolphin orgies or albatross infidelities, this is the show to see – but it might challenge, too, any lingering ideas that sex is all about procreation.
