The Young Ladies Of: Time Out Chicago Review The Young Ladies of… About Face Theatre. By Taylor Mac. Dir. Bonnie Metzgar. With Mac. About Face’s new regime wastes no time in putting its stamp on the company. For her inaugural show as artistic director, Metzgar brings performance artist Mac to town for his first Chicago appearance and lets his freak drag fly. Then again, “performance art” doesn’t quite capture what Mac does. Combining camp commentary, stand-up comedy (and tragedy), drag artistry and ukelele-strumming cabaret, Mac’s solo shows are pomo, pop-cult PowerPoint lectures wholly unlike anything we’re used to seeing in this city. The performer himself favors the term pastiche, and he teases and tortures genre boundaries with glee. First performed last year in New York, Young Ladies centers on Mac’s yearning to know more about his father, who was killed in a motorcycle accident when Mac was very young. When Mac’s mother announces she’s discovered boxes and boxes of his father’s letters in the garage, Mac hopes they’ll fill in the blanks. They turn out to be letters not from his father but to him, answers to a personal ad the elder Mac placed while stationed in Vietnam in 1968, requesting correspondence with the young ladies of Sydney, Australia. Reading the women’s letters, Mac tries to construct a portrait of his military-macho Texas dad that’s compatible with his own very different life. Alternatingly presentational and conversational, personal and political, and incorporating an inspired invocation of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel, Mac is striking, charismatic and quite provocative. For About Face, a company that’s defined itself by its sexuality while remaining strangely sexless, we find this an encouraging new sign.

The Young Ladies of…

About Face Theatre. By Taylor Mac. Dir. Bonnie Metzgar. With Mac.

About Face’s new regime wastes no time in putting its stamp on the company. For her inaugural show as artistic director, Metzgar brings performance artist Mac to town for his first Chicago appearance and lets his freak drag fly.

Then again, “performance art” doesn’t quite capture what Mac does. Combining camp commentary, stand-up comedy (and tragedy), drag artistry and ukelele-strumming cabaret, Mac’s solo shows are pomo, pop-cult PowerPoint lectures wholly unlike anything we’re used to seeing in this city. The performer himself favors the term pastiche, and he teases and tortures genre boundaries with glee.

First performed last year in New York, Young Ladies centers on Mac’s yearning to know more about his father, who was killed in a motorcycle accident when Mac was very young. When Mac’s mother announces she’s discovered boxes and boxes of his father’s letters in the garage, Mac hopes they’ll fill in the blanks. They turn out to be letters not from his father but to him, answers to a personal ad the elder Mac placed while stationed in Vietnam in 1968, requesting correspondence with the young ladies of Sydney, Australia. Reading the women’s letters, Mac tries to construct a portrait of his military-macho Texas dad that’s compatible with his own very different life.

Alternatingly presentational and conversational, personal and political, and incorporating an inspired invocation of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel, Mac is striking, charismatic and quite provocative. For About Face, a company that’s defined itself by its sexuality while remaining strangely sexless, we find this an encouraging new sign.

— Kris Vire