Faghag is a one-woman autobiographical show with some songs performed by Dylan Mulvaney.
Mulvaney is a trans-woman who reached pop cultural notability in 2023 when a brewery sent her a promotional can of their product. As a result of her being a trans-woman, the conservative right in America went into a tailspin, denigrated the brand on various social media sites, and the brewery’s factories were threatened with arson attacks. If this all sounds like something of an extreme response to an attempted product promotion, then that is because it is.
But if you’re Dylan, or any of the other millions of trans-people globally just trying to quietly live their lives, then this moment was one of far too many moments when the reality of attempting to merely exist was made horrific, as the right-wing press and conservative commentators poured on the vitriol.
It’s fair to say that with the current onslaught of anti-trans rhetoric, which is published seemingly daily in the media, it can seem as if the whole world is against Dylan and any other trans person, but the truth is rarely that simple.
Here, Dylan takes us through their journey, from a very defined set of beginnings to their current reality, which contains much less certainty. This is the first opportunity which Dylan has had to tell their own story in their own way, and their courage in putting themselves in front of an audience cannot be underestimated.
We begin before the beginning, both within the narrative and the show, as Dylan greets audience members and helps them to find seats. On the night we saw the show, being staged in one of the University of Edinburgh’s lecture theatres, it was sold out, and there were several large groups in attendance – one of which was plainly made up of Dylan fans. Dylan’s presence actually helped to make the whole occasion calmer, which would perhaps be unexpected if you were judging Dylan on merely what you’d read or heard previously.
Within the show, we begin before Dylan’s birth, as Dylan, as an angel, is enjoying some downtime before their next incarnation as a human being. It’s here that we get the first of numerous celebrity cameos, with Stephen Fry (Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows) as the voice of God.
Dylan takes us through their early life and makes clear that they have known they were a woman born into a man’s body from a very early age. Much of the story-telling is both self-deprecating and very humourous, and Mulvaney quickly builds a rapport with the audience – even those who haven’t made their love for Dylan plain during the pre-show.
As they continue into high school, Mulvaney’s issues with their assigned identity become more apparent – and harder to deny or suppress. Prescribed ‘Twink’, a never fully explained plot device, Dylan discusses with honesty their relationship with their mother, Debbie, who found it more palatable to have a gay son than a trans daughter.
Dylan’s freedom to publicly be themselves came during the COVID-19 pandemic, as lockdowns meant their developing career as a Musical Theatre performer evaporated overnight.
Downloading TikTok and then uploading videos of her transition, she made some waves in 2020 but became a global superstar in 2022 when she made her ‘Days of Girlhood’ video series.
Inevitably, a media frenzy followed, with everyone wanting to accept a person seen as being an acceptable face of ‘the Trans movement’. It’s astonishing to think that all of the discourse around Dylan and their actions has happened within such a short period of time – she only came to prominence in mid-2022, and the ‘beer incident’ happened in April 2023.
Dylan is incredibly honest about the highs and the lows, and it’s the middle section of the show that provides the most laughs as Dylan uses video footage to recreate incidents from that dizzying time and to have more conversations with God or his appointed representative in the guise of a Catholic Priest voiced by Alan Cumming (GoldenEye; My Father’s Dragon).
As the backlash develops, celebrity cameos re-enact the hatred. A sequence featuring Jonathan Van Ness (Queer Eye), and Heartstopper’s Joe Locke, is all the more devastating for seeing queer people repeat some of the language aimed at other members of the community.
It’s in the final, less frenetic third of the show that Dylan’s vulnerability in presenting her own life becomes heart-rending. A sexual encounter with a straight male friend, Mike, makes her reflect on how her life has changed, and how other people’s perceptions of her can sometimes surprise her in a positive way.
Her recreation of how scared she felt as people tried to attack her apartment and continue to attack her relentlessly in the press makes you want to protect her at all costs. She’s just a person trying to live her life, and to live it authentically, in an era when everyone is online, and everything is seen in black and white terms.
Indeed, one of the most powerful moments again played with humour, is when Dylan learns about nuance – and that we could all use some. For Dylan, this means being less certain about her identity, her sexuality, and how she interacts with others. She learns that she doesn’t have to be the face of an entire movement and that she doesn’t have to lean so hard into how she believes that femininity should be embodied.
The show concludes with a song that demands audience participation – and which contains a huge amount of the nuance she has just discovered. Human beings are complex, and our seeming need to put everyone into narrow, defined boxes, and to label them in palatable ways, is often destructive to an individual’s efforts to live their life in a way which feels authentic to them. This show helps us to realise that complexity and nuance are more reflective of the human experience than black-or-white absolutes.
This is a complex story, and a lot to squeeze into an hour. Mulvaney manages it with aplomb, and we suspect this show has a future beyond the fringe. Joyful, challenging, fulfilling, and ultimately life-affirming, this is a must-see for anyone who wants to learn the complex truth of one person’s life, behind the antagonistic headlines.
Dylan Mulvaney: FAGHAG continues at the Assembly George Square Studios – Studio Two (venue 17), at 9.40pm (21:40), until August 25th (not 14th or 21st).
