Mother, Maiden and Crone @ Bedlam Theatre
Fair is foul and foul is far in Mother, Maiden and Crone – a rip-roaring queering of Shakespeare’s Macbeth packed with drag numbers, dazzling humour, and drama
Wandering queers of the Edinburgh Fringe: may your legs carry you through the doors of Bedlam Theatre and into the frolicsome world of Mother, Maiden and Crone. This queer re-interpretation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth makes the excellent choice to centre the story’s most tantalising figures: the witches three. The bard’s iconic characters are reconfigured as Mother, the delightfully catty host of Club Limbo’s drag show; Maiden, the gorgeous shot boy with a bone to pick; and Crone, the club’s vaguely nonbinary, playfully chaotic, endlessly charming DJ. The three leads tackle these roles with an earnest joy that, helped by the show’s sharp writing, never falters, keeping the audience roaring with laughter. Together, these archetypes represent the stages of the queer life cycle: birth, life, and (twink) death.
Speaking of death, Club Limbo is about to become the site of a tragedy – and I’m not just talking about someone losing their bag on a night out. Miss McBride and her horrid hen party have arrived, and they’ve brought penis straws! McBride is our Macbeth: a young Scottish lass struggling to remain the centre of attention on her big night. Beware, my lady, of jealousy, that green-eyed monster… Wait, that’s the wrong play. But the lesson still stands. She and her entourage are fascinated by queerness’ apparent glitz and glamour, even hoping a little might rub off on them too. Yet the moment the consumerist fantasy of gay culture is broken – the drag queen’s wig removed to reveal the bald cap underneath – their discomfort takes centre stage. Queerness is cool, until it becomes real.
What makes this show special is its centring of the queer experience not as something extraordinary – though it never shies away from outlandishness – or atypical, but as its own distinct way of being. If anything, it’s straight people who feel like the ‘other’ here; if you glance at any one of the trio (Maiden most of all), you’ll usually be met with a mocking grin or an elegantly rolling eye as the straights fall about each other. By reworking the story of Macbeth in this (very loose) way, Shakespeare’s tragic tale becomes a grippingly farcical look at heterosexual culture that will have you witch-cackling.
Mother, Maiden and Crone, Bedlam Theatre, until 30 Aug, 9.30pm, £15.50/£13.50