Dylan Mulvaney’s F*ghag review – Edinburgh Fringe gets a sprinkling of stardom

US internet star Dylan Mulvaney knows how to get an audience on-side. It’s obvious from the moment you enter Assembly George Square Studios, where the starlet is welcoming punters, having a chinwag and acting like the loveliest usher in town. Before the show has even started, she’s made us care: we’re invested in her story.

Part musical, part-cabaret, fully confessional, Mulvaney’s F*ghag (produced by two of the hottest theatre producers around right now, Wessex Grove and Seaview) takes the crowd through a helter-skelter hour of career highs and personal lows, from a Catholic upbringing to her transition (a twink funeral is particularly amusing) and eventual internet stardom. It’s riotous, glorious fun, slickly directed by Tim Jackson (previously responsible for Two Strangers (Carry A Cake Across New York)), with enough melancholy and dramatic tension to provide a proper narrative journey. The interaction between faith and sexuality is especially riveting (Mulvaney begins the story of her life as an angel in heaven) – flip-flopping between reverential and irreverent.

You do get the sense that there’s an easy additional 30 minutes to Mulvaney’s tale – as well as possibly a new musical number or two to make the most of her wonderful singing voice. But as far as Fringe shows go, there’s a lot here that will prove sublime for any audience member, regardless of whether they’re familiar with Mulvaney’s sensational rise to fame, or her subsequent fiasco with a famous beer brand. A few amusing voice and video cameos add some witty surprises.

It’s also joyously queer, with a well-argued appeal for nuance amongst the frequent social media-fuelled frenzies of the modern age. A mega sing-along wraps up the show with a buoyant moment of communal celebration. A sure-fire hit on both sides of the Atlantic.