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Mirrorball review: A bold musical faces up to a new world of dangers

Belfast Children’s Festival: Mirrorball lends urgency to creativity as a radical idea, when a climate of hatred is depressingly resonant

MIRRORBALL

Lyric Theatre, Belfast
★★★★★

In this uncertain era, when the conspiracies of the internet have moved on to the streets through rallies and protests, who is at risk? At one point in Matthew Cavan’s bold new musical for young audiences, a sage-like drag queen looks at the neat narrative of an LGBTQ+ rights movement and scans it for flaws. “Most of us are legal, nowadays / But some of us need help to feel safe,” she sings.

Conceived after a period of woeful abuse, Cavan’s story follows his drag-queen persona Cherrie Ontop, a cabaret performer who is first seen on a stage resplendent with velvet curtains, describing a state of harmony. “You reflect all the love I have in me,” she sings in an upbeat synth-pop song, as if someone’s personal happiness were dependent on the people around them.

This musical for teenage audiences, scripted by Patrick J O’Reilly, may have the same reality-hopping appeals of children’s entertainment, but some details of its supernatural world are starkly real. When anti-LGBTQ+ protesters called the Narrow Minders interrupt Cherrie’s cabaret show, they are dressed like mad scientists, armed with gadgetry that can wipe drag queens’ brains. Desperate for escape, she dives into a separate dimension called Potential through her dressingroom mirror – a fantastical metaphor for self-care but also, complexly, a retreat for people who feel embattled.

Janice Kernoghan-Reid’s extraordinarily well-controlled production for Replay Theatre Company, which alternates between Cherrie’s adventure in the parallel dimension and the Narrow Minder’s schemes in the drag queen’s dressingroom, conveys a sense throughout of past oppressions being tempered but also of a new world of dangers. When Cherrie’s gay stage manager, superbly played by Gerard McCabe, is tortured by the protesters, he remains a picture of composure: a man immune to playground taunts, and content in a happy relationship. “Is that all you can do? Call me names?” he says. Yet when Cherrie encounters another drag queen (played with panache by Sean Kearns), who abandoned her creator back in the real world after being harassed by protesters at a drag story time event, the musical riffs on a sad possibility: what if artists bow to intimidation and quit their medium?

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While the composer Garth McConaghie’s taut, effervescent songbook plumbs synth-pop for its darker depths, there is a traditional appearance to Cavan’s character as a heroine with Broadway brass, literally luminous in Diana Ennis’s costuming, and pinball-battered by circumstance. However, a climactic song when the Narrow Minders try to eliminate Cherrie is poured full with the actor’s biography: the fear of HIV, the trauma of abuse and depression, the life-transforming powers of discovering a drag character. “Hit rock bottom. No way to stop / Thank my soul for Cherrie Ontop,” sings Cavan, with teary-eyed gratitude.

It’s hard to avoid being self-serious (see the comic lines by the Narrow Minders about unsatisfying artworks) while remaining upfront about real concerns. Mirrorball lends urgency to creativity as a radical idea, when a climate of hatred is depressingly resonant. Why not make something new?

Mirrorball was at the Lyric Theatre as part of Belfast Children’s Festival

Chris McCormack

Chris McCormack is a contributor to The Irish Times specialising in culture