James Phillips’ play is described as a journey into the visionary imagination and dark dream world of Alexander McQueen. Though there is a remarkable performance by Stephen Wight as the enfant terrible, who committed suicide in 2010 at the age of 40, I couldn’t recommend this play to anybody who wasn’t already an aficionado of McQueen. In order to appreciate what is going on in John Caird’s surreal production and Christopher Marney’s surreal choreography, it would help to see the McQueen Exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum first or at the very least to watch some of McQueen’s collections on line and witness their overwhelming emotional impact.
Alexander McQueen, a controversial and uncompromising fashion designer, was branded the bad boy of fashion. “I am not interested in being liked,” he said. His fantastic and incredible clothes are beautiful, cruel and disturbing works of art. They have a dark, stark and savage brutality. He was awarded British Designer of the Year four times. His collections in London and Paris were spectacular theatre and I suspect the only way you could do McQueen justice on stage would be to reproduce the drama and shock of the actual collections, with their extraordinary wigs and make-up, on a catwalk.