Foul mouthed coot, permanent as party balloons. Review by Will Winter

Cinema’s strength as a medium has always been its ability to tell real stories with heart and depth, teaching audiences about themselves and the world through narrative heft and striking visuals. It makes sense, then, that Coot, the almost-washed-up film director at the helm of an erotic musical sequel to ‘The Wizard of Oz’, wants to change the last act of the film to be a semi-autobiographical didactic saga about Dorothy learning to treat her recently-diagnosed gay diabetes.

Yes, there is such thing as ‘gay diabetes’ in the world of Foul mouthed coot, permanent as party balloons., Billy White’s one-woman show performing at Qtopia’s substation from the 15th to 19th of September. Coot, a storied Hollywood director on her last legs, is struggling to accept her recent medical diagnosis (of gay diabetes) while reflecting on her life and career. With her severely-parted wig and terrible screenplay in hand, Coot sets out to prove she’s still got directorial chops before the studio ages her out of fashion.

Coot has a transatlantic accent as loose as her hairline and she’s as subtle as a truck, the draggy and campy matron of musical film dry as a tumbleweed and thirsty for men and booze. That thirst, though, is troublesome in the first act, with Coot’s penchant for drinking gin instead of water (since ‘fish fuck in it’) a sign of her eventual diagnosis. Every line from White is delivered like a one-liner, her pace somewhere between Mae West’s winking flirtiness and Bea Arthur’s sandpaper smile. No matter whether the line lands, it’s her quick wit and cool understanding of 60’s Hollywood tomfoolery that makes Coot such a compelling lead.

No one expects subtly from someone in drag, which makes the layers that White builds behind the zingers so fascinating. Coot, seated at her desk for the length of the show, receives her devastating medical diagnosis (of gay diabetes) and refuses to accept it, aghast she can’t take insulin via dildo. Beneath her flippant approach to the condition is a genuine fear that her last chance to direct a sexploitation B-movie will be lost to time, her star never as high as her blood sugar.

As a character, Coot could have easily felt like a parody, but White’s earnest approach to her life and story in writing and performing makes her fully realised. After her opening monologue, Coot spends the rest of the show flipping through various conversations with pre-recorded voices, dazzling at dinner parties and running auditions for the role of slutty Dorothy and horny Tin Man. Almost every line from Coot is delivered as a retort, but her lived-in underbelly remains strong.

White is backed by uncredited voices, and the pivot to autocued supporting actors is a fun twist but wears quickly. The technical heaviness of maintaining this dynamic felt like watching the protagonist of a 2000’s point-and-click computer game that we couldn’t control, and it almost made me wish we stayed inside Coot’s head. I wanted to see the world through her, not with her, to be part of her attempts at self-preservation rather than see her falter at the hands of the executives funding her film.

But how triumphant it is, when we do follow this journey and watch Coot accept her new life (with gay diabetes) and find the strength to not only live with the disease, but incorporate it into her directing: she rewrites the triumphant third act of the film to follow Dorothy’s diagnosis, and the wicked witch, who gets horny when she’s wet instead of melting, helps her accept her new life through songs like ‘we’re off to fuck the wizard’.

The entire show is incredibly high-concept, and there is some absolute camp on display by White, but Coot remained real, understated, and endearing throughout. That’s what made her so human and divine, her foul mouth and her genuine passion.

___

Will Winter attended Foul mouthed coot, permanent as party balloons. on the Tuesday 15 of September. Foul mouthed coot, permanent as party balloons. plays until 19 September