Let's Assume I Know Nothing and Move Forward From There: letting the storm in

1 May 2024 - Photos by Drew Rowsome

Get out of your head for a bit. Get into mine.

Kelly Clipperton (MANifesto Are Gay, Pinky Swear, Memory Bank/Play Us Something From Your Back Catalogue, The Deep Ending), crowned with a feathered headdress, sashays into the audience belting the Frank Sinatra classic "Let's Get Away From It All." He perches on the bar and fires off a rat-a-tat series of one-liners lampooning local wannabe celebrities he has interacted with. It is fast, funny and just bitchy enough to be delightful. The references may fly over the headdresses of anyone not versed in historical Toronto queer club and theatre culture, but maybe not, a good hairdressing dildo joke is a guaranteed laugh. And as the woman I was lined up at the bar with said, "Don't I know you from somewhere in the '80s?" big sigh. "Kelly knows everyone." The song shifts into a medley with snippets of Bowie's incendiary "Cat People" and Clipperton's own rancorous "Napoleon." Clipperton is, as always, a live wire, connecting directly with the audience, all wide-eyed innocence at how audacious and rock star he is being. It is a boffo Vegas-esque opening number and fits beautifully into the decayed glamour of the Monarch Tavern.

If it doesn't make me bleed or cry, it's not working.

At this point, I must state that I have interacted with Kelly, both socially and professionally, many times over the decades we've known each other. And I've seen him perform many times, in many incarnations. Attending this one-man show, Let's Assume I Know Nothing and Move Forward From There, is as much curiosity about what Clipperton is up to as it is writing a review for promotion of the inevitable remount. But this seems to be more than Clipperton, with the help of director Naomi Campbell and a hardworking band, creating a Vegas-worthy vehicle to tour into perpetuity, Clipperton is also doing a deep dive into Stritch and Arthur territory, telling tales, humorous and harrowing, from his childhood 'til today. Individual segments are successful, sometimes riotously funny or tear-jerking, but the overarching story never quite gels. Clipperton is left frantically trying to tie it all the disparate stories and metaphors together until he says, "Fuck it' and launches into an old style rock n' roll version of his indie hit "Catherine Deneuve and the Deus Ex Machina." That he knows how to do, and the sudden burst of confidence and complete lack of self-deprecation is bracing, sending everyone into the night energized and satiated.

All the money you spend on your mental health is like shingling your house. No-one notices, but it keeps the storm out.

Let's Assume I Know Nothing is a valiant attempt to let the storm in, process it and then exorcise it. Opening night fell exactly one year after Clipperton's father passed. The real tears that Clipperton wiped away when talking of his father, were either overwhelmingly sincere or because his actorly skills allowed him to strip himself so emotionally bare that it became physical. However we never get a clear focus on how this affected Clipperton beyond grief. All the members of his family figure in the anecdotes that make up Let's Assume I Know Nothing but the dominant theme is how show business, hairdressing and homosexuality intersected to create the person, and the persona, that is Kelly Clipperton. We start with observational humour about the history of telephones that involves a quickly, and mercifully, abandoned theatrical device cribbed from Tomlin's Ernestine. But then a saving twist as Clipperton recalls using the family phone to answer gay personal ads from the Toronto Star. And the terror, and the thrill, of potentially being caught. A personal, and hilariously delivered, detail that feels universal. From there Clipperton details his time being bullied, being a theatre student, a teenage model, a go-go boy, a hairdresser, and a working musician usurped by Rupaul in Halifax. They are good stories delivered with panache and crack comic timing.

Gramma Daisy said, "That boy's going to be an artist. Keep him busy."

Clipperton has a rich, deep baritone and when it is firing on all cylinders, it is a lubriciously seductive instrument. Unfortunately on opening night, there was some issue—Clipperton made a gag of using a throat spray but there was fear in his eyes—and the shakiness and tonal problems led him to attempt to compensate with mannered shtick instead of embracing the rawness and scritches. There were enough verses where he powered through to show just how effective Clipperton can be when he, like in his work with MANifesto, bends a standard to his own usage. Clipperton is a natural and gifted raconteur who thrives, who comes alive larger than life, under a spotlight. And he can communicate a song's essence as filtered through the context he is placing it in. And he does love his fabulous costume changes. With a little dramaturgical focus, a throat lozenge or two, and the jolt of confidence he should have after opening night's rapturous ovation, Let's Assume I Know Nothing will be as idiosyncratically remarkable and talented as Clipperton himself. A show instead of a showcase.