Claiming to be the gayest thing in a room full of LGBT people in a gay bar (although straights are welcome too) is quite the boast. In the case of Martin J Dixon it is also entirely untrue. The most under-rehearsed thing I’ve ever seen, the least entertaining thing I’ve ever seen... these are far more likely possibilities.
Not worth the time or effort to attend
Dixon can be found in the basement of CC Blooms this month vying for the title of the Gayest Thing you’ve ever seen in his stand-up,-please-sit-down-again set. He tells unengaging stories of rim jobs, coming out and BDSM interspersed with repetitive, poorly sung musical numbers with bad dancing and high heels he can’t seem to walk in. The performance opens with Dixon telling the audience to imagine him rising from the floor. During the performance I saw he genuinely had to restart multiple times as he had forgotten what he was meant to do. This self-apology continued throughout the show with him trying to reassure the audience that he ‘can do better than that’ on multiple occasions.
It was unclear exactly who this show was aimed at. Anyone who isn’t a homosexual cis male seemed to be excluded from his definition of gay. The LGBT community that the show it categorised under expresses itself as just a lonely ‘G’. But for his gay male audience members he patronisingly asks if they’ve heard of ‘Grindr’, an absurd question to the audience of an LGBT fringe show. The material itself was unremarkable, perhaps said by a different performer there may have been some level of humour, but Dixon appears to be a have a remarkable gift as a naturally unfunny person. Throughout the show’s hour-long duration there were many audience members – who I became increasingly jealous of – as they made the smart decisions to jump ship and walk out. Although Dixon came across as well-meaning and is probably a perfectly lovely person his show is not worth the time or effort to attend.
