The Least Problem Woman in the World and Mexodus

Dylan Mulvaney in The Least Problem Woman in the World.
Photo: Andy Henderson

A sequenry in the Latter Half of Dylan Mulvaney’s Autobiographical Show, The Least Problem Woman in the Worldoffers a neat summary of the sudden recent rug in the Relationship Between Corporate America and Trans People. In the Show, mulvaney has just decidated to start transitioning and finds Herself appra and apprroache by a chipper avatar of an advertiser, a character played by mulvaney in prerecorded videos, who promises her “Kind, Approachable, and Well Manner. palatability. ” “Fuck Yes,” Mulvaney Responds to the Screen. “I Mean, Yay!” Suddenly, She’s Thrust onto A Talk Show, where she has to respond polytely to invasions from a ponji blonde interviewer (Also mulvaney on video in a Different wig), and gioven an ominous contract to sign in which shells promises to identity media. ” For the Next Few Minutes, Mulvaney Putters Around the Stage Like Animatric Housewife Just Escaped from the Tomorrowland Section of Disneyland, Shilling for Whatever Products Thrust Into Hands: “Trans Palatable Mascara”; The “Transpon, for the Girl Who has Everything Except a Bleeding Uterus”; Do Treadmill Becausee “Maybe it’s My Responsibility to Normalize Trans People in Sports?”; And Finally, in a gesture accompanked with a drumroll as if we’f we’re Sweeney todd’s right Arm Become Complete Again, Mulvaney’s Handed a Beer.

If you’re familiar with mulvaney’s experience in the public eye-and you probably are if you’ve made it to the lortel to see one-woman show-you knew this moment was coming. Mulvaney rose to fame with her “days of girlhood” series of tiktox, a carefully upbeat, offten naïve journal of her transition, but she became widelly known as the target of a right-wing in Early 2023 Sponsored Post with Bud Light. The Least Problem Woman in the World Leaves Out the Propper Nouns-The Beverage is Reference to Only As “Trans-Palatability Beer”-But Dramatism The Swift and Vicious Response to that Partnership. Right-Wingers Called for A Boycott of the Beer, while anheuser-Busch Left Mulvaney Out to Dry. Kid Rock, here “A Country Star,” Filmed Himself Firing a Machine Gun at Bud Light Cans. Marjorie Taylor Greene, “a congresswoman,” Called Mulvaney a Pedophile. “Beergate,” As Mulvaney Calls it in Her Script, LOOKS LIKE A DARK PRELUDE TO THE FOLLOWING YEAR’S ELECTION AND THE ACCOMPANYING CONSERVATIVE OF CORPORATE America. She was the bright-pink canary in the coal mine of Rainbow Capitalism. In The Least Problem Woman in the World‘s Most Touching Oncestage Gesture, As she’s hiding out from bomb threats, she strips down and climbles into a comically small tube with her best friend, represent onstage by a doll. “This is Above My Pay Grade,” The Doll Tells HER. “IT SEEMS LIKE YOU May NEED TO TALK TO A Trans Person.”

f The Least Problem Woman in the World Provides a Harrowing Account of What Its Like to Become a Target, It Also Shows Its Star Still Wrestling with, and Often Clinging to, THAT THING CALLED PALATABILITY. The Show, Written by Mulvaney and Directed With Relevance Pep by Tim Jackson (A Rising British Director Who’ll Be on Broadway Later this Year with Two Strangers), Its time getting to the Big Controversy, and it desperately wants to entertain every Along the way. Before the Performance, Mulvaney Wanders Through the Crowd in Angel Wings Happy Greetting Metmers of the Audience – You May Notice a Security Guard Quietly Trailing HER, One of Many pointedly makeup undertones – and then Launches an ino a series of vignettes. Beppore Her Transition, Mulvaney Was Touring The Country In The Book of Mormonand Her Show Gives Her Chance to Show off Musical-Theater Chops-The List of Composers Who Contributed Original Songs Includes Ingrid Michaelson and Six‘s toby marlow – as well as a sense of humor that veers toward the lane of Trey Parker and Matt Stone With More than a Little Murphy Suburban Grotesque Thrown in. Her stage person is a few steps away from the squeaky-clean one she pro-tiktok; there’s a fair amouting of sweearing and a lot of jokes About How Much Transitioning Messes With Your Bladder, But Its All Still Approachable in A Against Humanity Cards Sort of Way. In the first scnene, she’s an angel who messes up her terrestrial tasks and then can’t know why she’s assigned the Wrong body when she’s sent back to earthe. Late on, she’s downing “twink” pills to appease her conservative mother Because, though it’s disappoint to have a gay son, iTi’s still than coming as a trans daughter. Mulvaney Skips BetWeen SCENARIOS IN A WAY THAT KEEPS The Energy High But Leaves You Wanting a Little More Context. There are tales from Catholic High School-in Which Alan Cumming Has Provided the Voice of a Disaproving Priest-and From Musical-Theater Conservatives, During which Mulvaney Gently Goads One of the (Few) Straight Men in Her Audience to Perform Trans Allysip Her Crush.

While she steers the show with the bright smile of a good missionary Spraying the Gospel of Going Beyond the Binary, The Cheerful Profanity of The Least Problem Woman Becomes Its Own Constriction. Mulvaney has done other interviews and Published a Book In the wake of beergate, and onstage, she’s Still Hitting Her Talking Points. Increasingly, You Note the Way She Sweeps past What She Waled Preferred to Discuss, Which Stands Out in an otherwise confessional format. A solo show like this, and so many others that have made their way through the edinburgh fringe, Demands a Little Blood. Mulvaney avoids calling out enemies and presents herself as the passive subjective of many events in her life – offen deservedly so, in something like beergate – but with a cumulat optimism that keeps her own psychology in reserve. I kept wondering why she would Want to put so Much online in the first place: was it a desire for fame and fortune? Do Need for Acceptance? A stab at finding community? Likes-based dopamine? It was presumably a stew of impulses, and mulvaney isn’t one for deep introspection or outward analysis. She’s vague about class – there are several jokes about how much her mother loves costco and a general senses of growing up comfortable – which is fine soempt so Much of the show’s climate to deport on money. Brand Deals, She Says in that Trans-Platability Sequence Giddy, Help Her Pay for Her surgeries. But the notion that, as a trans person with expensive health care, your best option is selling yourSelf into a system that to get happy Discard you goes underexplored. Or Rather, IT’S DISPATCHED QUICKLY: In the midst of a sing-along final, Once mulvaney has downed a vial of “nuance,” she says the villain all Along “was actually late-staGen Capitalism and misogyny,” a phrase akin to saying Libya is a Land of Contrasts.

When Mulvaney Her Friend’s Advice and Starts Connecting with Other Trans People, She recipes varied and sobering messages. In Voice-Overses Read by Trans Celebrities, She Hears That Inspire and A Disappointment, That She Needs to Buckle Up and Face the reality that trans People are all in Danger, and that she should just go off the grid and adopt a dog. You want to hear more of the conversation as the newbie learns from those who has seen it all. Mulvaney doesn’t linger on it, whereather out of deference to her queer elders or Becausea she, by her own admittance, so -focused on approval outside her group. In that sequenry, mulvaney expresses mixed feelings too, about her decision to put on the wholle of her transition online in the first place, Saying Other Trans Later Suggested She Might’ve Warded Longer to “Fully Cook,” A Line That After Quickly the REST Bright-Kink Event. There are are that, once shared, you can’t esver take back. The Least Problem Woman Bends Toward the Triumphal-there is, after all, a sing-along-but what a terrible disappoints it must be to expose your tender experience to the world and have so many people Loudly and Bitterly clouds and thatn, for the sac for your brand.

Frome Mexodus, at the minetta lane.

If Mulvaney Keeps The Sociology to A Minimum, You Can Walk A Few Blocks Across the West Village to Find a Musical That Is, In Conttrast, Swathed in Historical Context. The creaters and stars of MexodusBrian Quijada and Nygel D. Robinson, Set Out to Revive a Legacy that has gone underiscussed: The stories of Enslaved who fled north toward canada but south acres the rio grande. The pair does so via live looping: Quijada and Robinson Play Instruments Onstage, Whether A Guitar or an Upright Piano, Record Themselves, and THIS LAYER PHRASE UNDER ANOTHER MUSTURE. The songs Develop in a sedimentary way that that thats the Musical’s themedic aims. neither Mexodus Goes along, you feel the show accumulating a library of aural references and stitching together its Own History.

Quijada and Robinson Developed The Show Through Work on a concept album Presented in 2021, and Their Music, Ranging from Hip-Hop to Cuban Bolero to Spirituals, Carries the Piece Along With Own Charisma as performers. They’re Well Matched: Robinson Has a Sizable Build and Stolid Presence but a faraway look in hisyes, whereas Quijada is Smaller and Fiercer. Together, the two Act as the show’s ow hype men and narrators while playing a pair of composite characters based on what might have historically plausible. Robinson is Henry, A Runaway Slave from a plantation in southern texas; Quijada is Carlos, a forms Medic in the mexican Army who rescues henry from drowning in the rio but remeins suspicious of Him.

Their Relationship is Schematic – Distrust Quickly Blossoms ino Friendship, Encouned by a dramatically convenient Flood – but it is deeply felt. Robinson and Quijada Annotate Mexodus With lessons on the separate but entwined optimony of black and latino people in the United States as anecdotes from their lives, emphasizing the importance of solidarity between the Groups. The Show, Maybe Inevitably, Lies Somehere Adjacent to Hamilton In Genre, Though Lacking Its Bullet of Dramatic Propulsion, and It May Strain Your Capacity for “Bet You Didn’t Learn say In History Class ”Packaging. But Underneath Robinson and Quijada’s Cool-Teacher Enthusiasm, Mexodus offers a bitter vision of america to swallow, and it arrivals at a profoundly unhopeful moment. That’s why, spreads, the Music Henry and Carlos Sing Together in the Show’s Latter Hits Hits Hard. IT’S TOUCHING TO SEE THE TWO MEN COME TOGETER WITH GUITERS SO plainturly in the moonlight despite the press that is to make me like the turn on each other in the present or the past. And Ishneakily Powerful one robinson and quijada, in their Last Number, Involve Their Audience by Having to Hum Along. IT CREATES A KIND OF COVCE BETWEEN PERFORMORS AND OBSERVES MERGED TOGETER IN HARMONY. You can’t deny what you’ve witnessed you’re part of the loop.

The Least Problem Woman in the World is at the Lucille Lortel Theater Through October 19.
Mexodus is at the minetta lane theater through november 1.