Language UnBecoming a Lady

The New Theatre, Dublin

Only the lucky few are granted guardian angels; others must create their own. For Robert, growing up gay in 1970s Limerick, the herald of his sexual identity is an abrasive school friend, his emancipator comes in the generous shape of a gravel-voiced Dublin drag queen, but his saviour and protector is The Divine Diana, his drag alter-ego, who seems heaven-sent.

“St Danny La Rue, pray for us,” says Diana in her dressing room, donning a feather boa like a priest’s stole, intoning the names of other icons in a camp catechism: St Judy, St Liza (“begotten of St Judy”), St Marlena. This is her religion. Myles Breen’s warm and engaging solo show for Limerick’s Bottom Dog might suggest alternative beliefs, but in its gay coming-of-age story it can be as conventional as a prayer.

Set in the thawing years of a repressed and repressive Ireland, it embellishes the story of a “tightly wound, always on guard, unhappy boy” with the keen ache of vivid memory. Unlike other drag performances, though, which tend to subvert and explode form, Bottom Dog’s narrative methods are curiously straight. The tone is nostalgic, the songs that nudge the narrative are, literally, camp by numbers, while the only idiosyncrasy about Diana is her surprisingly drab fashion sense – a satin gown, opera gloves and heavy pearls – as though styled by the dowager of the Marx Brothers movies.

Perhaps that’s why, after a fitful initial dialogue between Diana and Robert, director Liam O’Brien’s production relaxes with Diana’s removal.

Unadorned, vulnerable and comically self-critical, Breen is a shining and believable presence. Robert’s history moves fluently, from childhood camouflage (“My first, if not my greatest, performance: I will be normal.”) through furtive discoveries in an era of criminalised sexuality, to the liberating influence of a Dublin drag queen named, plausibly, Dolly Mixture.

As writer and performer, Breen’s most affecting move is not to seek emotion, but to let it creep up unbidden, at times to even overwhelm him. There is nothing more heartbreaking than Robert’s inability to admit his sexuality to his dying mother, whose only concern is for his happiness. In the silence of the unsaid lies the quiet tragedy of countless others.

Such human moments give Robert a conviction that his alter ego lacks, and important questions go similarly unanswered: what, other than an off-night, compels Robert’s monologue? What critical juncture has he reached? Despite O’Brien’s brisk pacing and Breen’s affecting performance, without that frame the story begins to lose shape. Diana, an implausibly immaculate conception, doesn’t gain the edge, tragedy or even fun of a companion or protector, as though the play’s real interest is elsewhere. Not in a drag act, but in the striptease of identity: in Robert unbecoming this lady.

Runs until Apr 23.