Gender fluidity and the trans experience were highly visible themes at this year’s Edinburgh fringe. Now, the Come As You Are festival at Camden People’s theatre presents a smart lineup of shows that suggests the stage will continue to be a fruitful space for exploring the possibilities and complexities of a gender-free world.
The theatre company Milk Presents previously had a hit with Joan, which offered a different take on the Joan of Arc story, performed by drag king champion Lucy Jane Parkinson. Now they turn their attention to the Greeks and the tale of the minotaur confined in the maze and stalked by Theseus. They season it with a dash of Icarus myth.
Like Joan, the show has a cabaret-style vibe. It’s performed by a crack cast of trans and gender-fluid performers who sport little gold horns, pencilled on moustaches and glitter beards as they mash up the stories and embrace a range of musical styles from rap to ballads.
Four of the cast play the minotaur, otherwise known as Asterion, who after a row with mum leaves home. Asterion is caught both in a maze of streets and a labyrinth of emotion and confusion, particularly when faced with those who are uncomfortable with difference.
The minotaur – both bull and human, not just one thing but also another – offers a useful way of looking at how notions of gender can be negotiated – and interrogating masculinity in a similar way to Rhum and Clay’s show Testosterone. When Adam Robertson’s Theseus turns up with heroism on his mind, he is a preening, narcissistic fellow full of bluff and bluster.
That intervention is one of the most comically enjoyable interludes in a piece that – like the cast who are exploring their own genders – is very much a work in progress. It often lacks pace and momentum, and in some ways feels less coherent and focused than a tryout of the material that I saw earlier this year. But there is both a playfulness and richness in the way the company invert and reassemble old stories. It is compelling and often moving to watch a cast intent on chiselling new stories out of old, and in the process throwing off outmoded constraints and embracing their new, constantly evolving identities.
• At Camden People’s theatre, London, until 30 September. Box office: 020-7419 4841.
