MAKE ME GORGEOUS!

Review by Noah Witke Mele

Wade McCollum is triumphant as the fabulous Kenneth “Kate” Marlowe, whose wild and raucous life
of delicious debauchery is brought to the stage with grace and care in Make Me Gorgeous! by playwright Donnie Horn. Playhouse 46 at St. Luke’s, a low-ceilinged venue filled with cabaret tables and a luxuriously decorated dressing room, perfectly matched the intimate nature of the solo performance.

The ninety-minute monologue, interspersed with song, dance, and charismatic banter with the audience, chronicles Marlowe’s history, beginning with her midwestern childhood and ending with her gender transition.
Switching effortlessly between a myriad of supporting characters with unmistakable voices and
mannerisms, McCollum drives the script and the audience through Marlowe’s story at breakneck speed,
dwelling in moments of intense pain and pleasure, and bringing Marlowe’s voice from her books into joyous
life.

Nearly all the aspects of this play contain such shapeshifting: button-up shirts morph from preppy gaiety to readymade femme, napkins transform into a glorious skirt and underneath it all are scandalous sequins,
bedazzled pasties, and more luscious burlesque accouterments. But this doesn’t end with Jeffrey Hinshaw’s
costumes, in the play’s musical breaks McCollum’s dancing ranges from a sensuous performance of Sally
Rand’s fan dance, with ostrich feathers in silhouette to a highly stylized depiction of Marlowe’s rape while
serving in the military, lit with deeply saturated red and blue.

This moment of violence serves as an emotional climax for the play, handled with a stark carefulness that diverges from the comic deflection that Marlowe uses to cope with the hardships of being a sex worker along with the other twists and turns of her story. Such tactful direction and sincere performance bring a necessary depth of emotion to a character that could otherwise come off as a gross stereotype.

Altogether, Make Me Gorgeous! is an indispensable work of queer theater that fills a gap in the history
of gay men, trans women, and drag queens alike, on top of being a spectacular night out at the theater!

EYE ON THE ARTS, NY — Noah Witke Mele