Do we need more gay heroes? Daniel Foxx thinks so. If you are watching a movie, and “you can’t tell which one of them is meant to be bad,” he sings, “Just ask which one’s most likely to suck off your dad.” Such is Foxx’s pop-culture inheritance that villains (Jafar, Voldemort, Ursula the sea witch) are camp, heroes are straight. Does that make Foxx, with his hair artfully styled into horns, a bad guy? Audiences at the 29-year-old’s fringe debut will surely demur: Villain is a winning hour about self-acceptance and accepting, too, that being a baddie – depending on how you look at it – might not be the worst thing to be.
As per debut-show convention, Foxx’s set traces his life story, from his schooldays when the word “gay” was a go-to insult and grandad left the room when Elton John appeared on TV. At home, young Daniel nurses a passion for Disney’s Beast, pre-transformation into a prince. At school, bullies shout “bums to the wall” when he enters the room (not an effective defence, as Foxx cheerfully points out). Amid all this, a set-piece revisiting school Nativity plays feels tangential to the queer theme, notwithstanding Foxx’s celebration of his ageing headteacher, muscling aside her charges to appear in the key role of, er, Princess Di.
The second half focuses on Foxx as a grownup, trying to pass as straight, dating the guys who once bullied him. A handful of songs help tell the story, such as his hymn to wannabe James Bond middle-aged dads, Ian from Next Door, before Foxx emerges from his chrysalis to make peace with flamboyant villainhood. Cue a big-hitting routine about “flying ableist paedophile” Peter Pan, before Foxx – now shacked up with a wrestler boyfriend – delivers to his liberal arts-festival audience some amusingly off-message life lessons. But what did we expect? He is the villain, after all, and proud of it.
• At Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh, until 27 August.
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