Review – My Trip Down the Pink Carpet, Midtown Theatre

We are all out of step with our write-ups for various reasons so bear with us.

We actually saw Mr Leslie Jordan‘s My Trip Down the Pink Carpet on Saturday night paying real dollars out of our own purses, this all taking place before being introduced to its lovely producer (well, one of them; Lily Tomlin is another) Mike Dvorchak through Mark Shenton.

Are you keeping up with all this?

This “full disclosure” principle is damned complicated and dull.

Anyway, all you really need to know is that Leslie Jordan is the actor who deliciously played the diminutive, southern Beverley Leslie, arch-enemy of Megan Mullally’s Karen Walker.

What you may not know is that the character was originally intended to have been female and played by Joan Collins who pulled out when she found out that her wig would be pulled off in a cat-fight with Karen Walker.

Indeed! These are the sorts of things one does really want to know, but Mr Jordan’s show is more than show-business tittle-tattle – it’s about his journey from self-loathing child to somewhat-unconvincing-as-a-heterosexual bit player to becoming one of the biggest (not literally obviously), openly gayest, funniest character actors of today.

Mr Jordan describes himself as a “17 year old cheerleader in the body of a 55 year old man” and says he “fell out of the womb and into my mother’s high heels” and  turns out to be the sweetest and most disarmingly candid of autobiographers as he charts his journey to self-acceptance.

He has a terrific turn of phrase (Tammy Wynette is the “queen of co-dependent anthems”; “I’m sweatin’ like a paedophile in a Barney costume”) and there are some top rate anecdotes.

George Clooney went up in our estimation for a marvellous practical joke that he played on Mr Jordan who was dieting at the time. Clooney persuaded the costume department to take out Mr Jordan’s clothes an inch at a time causing him to be most perplexed that his waistline was shrinking rapidly while his weight stayed the same.

Jordon tells hilariously wicked stories about a slew of stars including Mark Harmon, Marlee Matlin and Boy George and his honesty discussing his dealings with drugs, alcohol and hustlers is alarmingly refreshing.

On top of this you can enjoy drinks in a glass at your table at the Midtown Theatre. A few theatres here seem to be reluctantly allowing drinks into the auditorium but only if dispensed in a plastic beaker with a lid requiring more brain-power to negotiate than would be involved in solving a Rubik’s cube. Needless to say, the Whingers managed to get into theirs only by breaking them.

Anyway, hopefully Mr Jordan will come to London, but in case you can’t wait you can buy his book at Amazon and watch this.

With Leslie Jordan - Will & Grace's Beverley Leslie

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