With her TikTok series a smash during lockdown, and after a chat with President Biden no less, Dylan Mulvaney was flying high as one of America’s most prominent transgender women – until a brand partnership with Bud Light sparked a boycott and a backlash. A year on, the 27-year-old arrives in Edinburgh with a musical comedy telling the story of her life, from dysphoric infancy via “twink” youth to notoriety as the gender nonconformist chewed up and spat out by America.
It’s not news that Mulvaney has musical-comedy chops: pre-transition, she starred in The Book of Mormon in the US. Faghag deploys those skills partly to make us laugh, but equally – as is the way of such shows – to secure whoops and cheers at our host’s “this is me!” self-celebration. A central section, focusing on her disorienting experience in the public gaze, is Faghag’s most compelling. It ends more like a rally than a comedy, but there’s plenty to enjoy before that, as the San Diego native evokes her experience simultaneously lionised and reviled, exploited and rejected by the corporate and celebrity worlds.
