Better Than Sex ☆☆☆☆
The Story of Mae West
Better than Sex – The story of Mae West is a one-woman cabaret performed by Bella Bevan. It opens with several of her most famous quips at which Mae says defiantly “You can leave now…that’s what you came for isn’t it?”. In many ways director/writer Emily Hutt has hit the nail on the head; after all these years, has Mae West become no more to us than a few witty lines in an age where the outrageous has become the everyday, where we can’t avoid Nicky Minaj’s WAP or evade tripping over Lil Nas’s Satan Shoes….
Bevan certainly looks the part and is captivating. She is dripping in diamonds and wearing a revealing beaded black dress edged in modesty-saving lace all topped off with West’s signature platinum blonde curls. Better than Sex also does a terrific job of letting us peek behind the veil, and we hear about her mother and father (“The Model and The Boxer”) and her first gigs in vaudeville where she sang songs such as “Frankie & Jonny were lovers”.
Hutt manages to convey the deep-down urge of many would-be performers, where no other career would suit yet she is desperately trying to find her ‘performer self’. An early (if imperfect) LGBTQ+ ally, West often performed on the same bill as drag queens, even before The Pansy Craze. There is a memorable moment in the show where a drag queen imparts wisdom by remarking that her wit is her unique selling point and that in the end forms the basis of Mae West’s persona. As Mae says, “drag queens are some of the bravest people she ever met”.
Mae West was arrested in 1932 and rather than accept a fine, she did the sentence of eight days on Roosevelt Island and garnered a hurricane of PR for her efforts. Singing songs such as “I’m no Angel” she was now firmly in the public perception as an infamous blonde. Bevan brings all this to vivid life, possessing a superb voice, well suited to the material, and can pitch a song as deep as her subject could and wisely avoids attempting to imitate West’s highly idiosyncratic style, where every note lingers, falls, or drawls in a sexual provocation.
She eventually heads off to Hollywood where she is in a permanent battle with a censor, but her years at Paramount meant she became the highest-paid woman in the world until the censor won out and his victory became “the corset that tightened around Hollywood!”.
The show wraps up with a cracking version of “All of Me”, yet it’s still tinged with that streak of defiance – but perhaps now we can appreciate the person behind the icon a little more deeply.
Presented by Temporarily Misplaced Productions Part of The Camden Fringe Festival
REVIEW : JONNY WARDJonny Ward, Queerguru Contributing EDITOR is a drama graduate but has worked backstage for many years at venues such as The ROYAL ALBERT Hall, The 02, Southbank Centre and is currently at The NATIONAL THEATRE. He lives in Hoxton, London and is delighted to check out the latest, the hottest and the downright dodgy in queer culture for Queerguru. (P.S. He is currently single) @JonnyWard360
