Robert C. Y.
Yelp
Way back in 1980, I saw a little poster touting a performance by a London drag troupe called "Bloolips". It was 5, I think, drag queens dressed so outrageously that I could not ignore them. So, I bought tickets to the Orpheum theatre and we went to see "Bloolips, Lust in Space". It was there it happened. I fell madly in love with performers with names like "Bossy Bette", "Lavinia Co-op" and "Naughty Knickers".
The humor was sans four letter words, but full of flamboyance and outrageousness. Since that time, about every year or two, we saw the troupe at various venues and started bringing friends with us. Everyone got hooked and we ended up seeing Bloolips about five times throughout their years long run, in five different productions at five different venues. We saw outfits made of plastic tea strainers and other unusual items. We even saw Bloolips flopping around the stage in bacon and egg costumes on a sizzling skillet. Don't ask, you needed to be there.
The lead performer of the troupe was a man called (tee hee) Bette Bourne, nee Peter Bourne. He had a flair and a fast witted talent the likes I had never seen on the drag stage. Bette was 40 years old back at the Orpheum in 1980, and I was 38. Before that time, he was a rather handsome young man, very involved in Gay rights, specifically a group called The Gay Liberation Front. A rather "in your face" tribe of pissed off Gays and Lesbians totally fed up with the often violent intolerance of Gays in the world.
Last night, I had the outrageous good fortune to see Bette Bourne as himself at 70, doing a recreation of an actual interview conducted by playwright Mark Ravenhill who was playing himself.
The play/documentary/interview is actually two acts long. By the time you're finished, you would have liked a third act to happen. The space at St. Ann's Warehouse, in Dumbo, Brooklyn is informal and a low staging area was a "pretend" room in Bette Bourne's London home. Furnished with a red area rug and luxurious Ikea furniture it was a stretch, but who cared.
Bette repeated the interview aided by a large screen upon which various stills and videos were projected, documenting visually, Bette's life. The product of a loving mother and an abusive father, Bette emerged as a quite talented, witty actor. His delivery, seldom punctuated by four letter words, was funny, bittersweet and, sometimes, downright sad.
Bette entertained with a few little numbers he performed on his various stages, this time accapella, with only his tapping foot to set the cadence. Not easy, but, after all, we're talking Bette Bourne here and it worked just fine, thank you. Bette wore a sparkling sequined top, tasteful lipstick, his own hair and some campy looking shoes with taps that he used in an impromptu dance routine, during which he quipped "and I'm seventy". Not unlike back in the 80s, at the Theatre for the New City , when he danced and said "and I'm almost fifty".
There were a few people in the kind of strange audience mix for whom the show did not work. Well, tough titty. With Bette Bourne, what you are told you are going to get is what you get. And sometimes a double helping.
All in all, I found the performance entertaining, sad and foremost, hilarious. The study of Bette's mother's death and the deaths of over one hundred of his friends and acquaintances from AIDS, was dearly bittersweet, thoughtfully executed and, mercifully, short.
We left feeling like we had a last visit with an old friend. I, personally left feeling like I left an old lover.
Thank you Bette, for years of the best medicine, laughter. This was a wonderful way to say adieu and god bless. And too bad you didn't notice me in the crowd all those years, we could have been an item.