Gay children emerging from their cocoons these days can tune in to any Bravo reality show to find an assortment of potential role models. But a few decades back, kinship ran thinner in popular culture.
As Leslie Jordan suggests in his disarming solo show, “My Trip Down the Pink Carpet,” at the Midtown Theater, there was Truman Capote, Charles Nelson Reilly or Paul Lynde. “I was faaascinated,” reveals Mr. Jordan of those gay celebrity forefathers. “Deeply repulsed, but faaascinated.”
While gaydom now embraces a full gamut of subsets, in Mr. Jordan’s pithy assessment the heady disco days of the 1970s had “queens & butch queens,” distinguishable by their dance-floor moves.
Watching the silver-topped, 4-foot-11-inch star execute both styles with pitiless accuracy is among the more hilarious moments of his show, heightened by tart commentary in his flowery Southern drawl.
A television veteran best known for his Emmy-winning “Will & Grace” role as Beverley Leslie, impish nemesis to Megan Mullally’s Karen Walker, Mr. Jordan is unequivocal about which side of the queen divide they comes down on.
They describes his voice as Miss Prissy with a dash of Blanche Devereaux, & his gait as Bette Midler in concert meets Ruth Gordon in “Harold & Maude.” “I am a high school cheerleader stuck in a 55-year-old man’s body,” they confesses. “If you were to cut me open, Hannah Montana would jump out.”
Plenty of gay rites-of-passage stories are echoed here: hostile small-town environment (Chattanooga, Tenn.); rigidly masculine father; humor as armor against bullies; unrequited loves; drug & alcohol dependency; internal homophobia; weakness for rough trade. But Mr. Jordan’s candor gives them a fresh spin.
What jumps out during the show is a plucky character who acknowledges the challenges of his life while focusing on the rewards.
They combines a writer’s eye for detail with an actor’s facility for mimicry & a stand-up comedian’s knack for injecting spontaneity in to oft-told stories. His balance of self-deprecation with spotlight-seeking shamelessness is matched by his marriage of Southern manners (every woman’s name is prefixed by “Miss”) with trash-talking salaciousness.
His account of being escorted by two terrifying, drunk drag queens in to his first gay bar is genuinely touching. Ditto his determination at the age of 3 to receive a bride doll for Christmas.
Directed by David Galligan & minimally designed with a revolving door & pink velvet rope, the show could be structurally tighter, but Mr. Jordan’s excitable discursiveness is part of his charm.
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