Review: Ryan Patrick Welsh Is Sex, Camp, Rock ‘n Roll

They had me from the opening number, a sultry rendition of Raf’s “Self Control” (made popular by Laura Brannigan) that Ryan Patrick Welsh crooned while descending the center aisle of the theater, like Bob Barker hosting an extra slutty episode of The Price Is Right. Italian disco with a confident pelvic groove, it’s the aural equivalent of a hit of poppers and the perfect way to ease us into Sex, Camp, Rock ‘n Roll, Welsh’s revealing, provocative, and all-around delightful cabaret show about his experience as a sex worker.

Welsh (who, like a true hooker, answers to he, she, and they— just as long as you call) has been a fixture of the San Francisco queer cabaret scene for years, but isn’t much known in these parts. Hopefully that will change following this show’s triumphant New York debut at the Tank, one of the best venues in the city to catch up-and-coming talent before they blow up.

Welsh is certainly one to watch, with the stage presence of a young Taylor Mac and the infinitely expressive eyes of the late Charles Ludlam. A vision in mesh and garters (the outrageous costumes are by Andie Patterson) she is the oversexed soul of Luke Evans at Les Mouches following a Saturday night performance, indefatigable and ready to thrust her tongue into the taboo topics that Broadway producers wouldn’t touch with a social distancing strap-on.

Welsh insists that they never realized the Donna Summer song “Bad Girls” (a drive-time favorite when he was in elementary school) was about prostitutes until much later. “Maybe some of you are just realizing that now,” she says, a mischievous twinkle in her eye as she instructs us to listen to the lyrics. Welsh’s energetic performance had the whole audience on its feet to toot toot, heeeey, beep beep.

Our star is supported by a sexy band, the Grunts (bassist Austin West, drummer Nathan Ellman-Bell, and music director Noah Bossert, a joy to behold grooving out behind the keys), and two scene-stealing backup vocalists, K*nt #1 (Ruby Day) and K*nt #A (Adria Swan), bewigged extraterrestrials from planet Berghain. Welsh initially projects a soft resentment toward the K*nts, like Hedwig at the salad bar refusing to be upstaged by Yitzhak.

“I don’t want anybody else / when I think about moi I touch myself,” he purrs Divinyls’ ode to masturbation, lyrics ever so slightly tweaked for the gooner narcissist. It’s shtick that few performers beyond Miss Piggy could sustain, and Welsh wisely abandons this egotistical mask so regularly donned by young performers for something far more difficult: naked honesty.

Yes, sex work is work and it’s true that it has allowed Welsh to survive in San Francisco, a town increasingly inhospitable to anyone without a trust fund or Anthropic contract. It paid for the earliest iterations of this show. But it’s not without its downsides, which Welsh describes in a series of bracingly vulnerable monologues.

And it hasn’t much helped his romantic life, already difficult for a single queer approaching middle-age in the era of the Grindr meat market, and nearly impossible if you get paid to stuff the sausage. Welsh has us close our eyes and asks us to raise our hands in response to the question “would you ever date a sex worker?” Unlike so many of the tech bros in his hometown, however, Welsh keeps this data a closely guarded secret.

You don’t need to be a practitioner of the oldest profession to understand the special brand of heartache that comes with falling in love with a man who is already attached, something Welsh has done (as have most of the gay men in my life). Welsh’s gorgeous rendition of “Fifty Percent” from the 1978 Broadway musical Ballroom recontextualizes the torch song for the age of ethical nonmonogamy, when your lover’s spouse might also be your close friend and fully aware of the relationship. Does it make it any easier? And can any of us truly ever have 100 percent of another person?

Bravely, Welsh admits that she wants more than she’s gotten. Her moving interpretation of Jessie Mae Robinson’s “The Other Woman” is a highlight of the evening. It images the glamor of a life relieved from domesticity, but also the heavy solitude of the committed lone wolf. Welsh makes this 1958 jazz number feel like a brand-new song written for the millions who have mistaken social atomization for liberation.

Thrillingly, Welsh holds out the promise of a future of queer performance art and cabaret unburdened by the need to propagandize about equality, in which we can honestly discuss both the joy and pain to be found at the frontier of individualism. A perfect balance of laughter, tears, and song, Sex, Camp, Rock ‘n Roll is a complete workout for the queer soul.