I Wanna Be Mark Wahlberg

Luckily Rachel is a handsome, even mesmerising figure as she shape-shifts through the bodily and attitudinal postures of manhood. She commands the stage as a super physical performer, celebrating and owning for herself masculine virtues of strength, fortitude and sexual confidence. 

Standing square and muscular in her Calvin Kleins, with blue eyes and an unruly mane of blonde hair, she conjures Mark Wahlberg in his famous underwear commercial or Brad Pitt’s cute Achilles in Troy.  Nicely lit, she seems to shimmer between the two, and between male and female, and what little she lets us know about her. 

She recounts how her conservative New Zealand family said she had more body hair than her brother, how she wore his practical hand-me-downs instead of pink dresses, climbed trees and adored dinosaurs. 

These modest memories are such familiar tropes now in our queer childhoods and don’t give much away.  Rachel seems happy with womanhood but loves her girlfriend’s appreciation that she fucks like a man. Proudly brandishing high a stool for much too long, she quotes Germaine Greer saying that Femininity is just a fake version of Femaleness. 

But with her long pauses and quizzical stares to the audience, that’s about it for content and rapport.  The show tramples over some niceties about gender diversity but it’s not enough, as (this time) director May Tran must have realised. So, see it in a few years. 

Martin Portus