At one point in her new show, “The Least Problematic Woman in the World,” Dylan Mulvaney informs the audience, “I’m a musical theater major, believe it or not.”
That’s a telling insistence because Mulvaney is probably best known as a transgender social media influencer who chronicled her transition on TikTok and landed at the center of a Bud Light boycott in 2023. The stage show also follows the publication in February of her memoir, “Paper Doll: Notes From a Late Bloomer,” in which she recounts navigating death threats, isolation and depression in the wake to the ferocious conservative-led backlash to the beer campaign.
But those expecting a broadside against her detractors may be disappointed. As she notes in the show, some of her critics are opposed to trans rights; some are trans people themselves, upset at her brand of representation. Instead Mulvaney delivers an entertaining, bold and colorful portrait — a play with music — of all her complexities, and the tumultuous life of someone who would rather perform and have fun than speak from podiums.
Setting the mood, a peppy Mulvaney, dressed in wings, greeted arriving audience members outside the Lucille Lortel Theater, where the show opened this week. (She did the same when the solo show premiered in 2024 at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.) Once everyone is seated, the show formally opens with Mulvaney and three other angels, all played by Mulvaney on screens behind her, outlining various ambitions to be the prettiest, cleverest and the happiest — with Mulvaney, a.k.a. Angel 666, aiming to be “the least problematic woman in the world.”
This is a wink to the operatic fallout of “Beergate,” and Mulvaney’s stories and original songs boomerang between the serious and salacious. The opening number, which imagines a previous earthbound life of her founder-angel who fatally drowned “in the Jacuzzi on Epstein island,” seems apposite for this onetime cast member of “The Book of Mormon.”
The show’s polished, witty pop songs were written by a gold-star collective of Abigail Barlow (“The Unofficial Bridgerton Musical”), Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss (“Six”), Ingrid Michaelson (“The Notebook”) and Mark Sonnenblick (“The Devil Wears Prada”). The upbeat numbers — with the occasional reflective ballad — track a roller-coaster story of timid self-questioning and raucous self-discovery. Mulvaney is variously tough, vulnerable, hilarious (her stricken expressions are pure screwball-comedy heroine), horny, done-in and all-conquering
Her Roman Catholic faith is a quiet constant in the show. We see her seeking guidance as a “mature” 4-year-old (who knows God has “put me, a girl, into what appears to be a boy’s body”), then in a school uniform (“very Diane Keaton”) and as a teenager working in a Lush store where her nemesis is an older gay man. We also observe her conflict-marked relationship with her mother (a W.W.E.-style parody, “Mother and Gay Son Wrestling”), her embrace of her previous identity as a gay man and, after transitioning, her farewell to that self (“Kill the twink,” she proclaims, in a glittering pink church robe).
Her reflections on the boycott are the most powerfully realized and acted part of the show — particularly set against the backdrop she describes of a second Trump administration focused on curtailing trans rights. The irony of the political and cultural firestorms that have raged around her is that Mulvaney would rather be a performer and ham than trans activist and spokesperson.
As a small-scale, showy show, “The Least Problematic Woman in the World” is impeccably styled, featuring exuberant costuming by Enver Chakartash and a very pink apothecary-meets-purgatory set by Tom Rogers, with astute lighting by Cha See and video design by Caite Hevner. Unseen celebrity co-stars make appearances too, in voice form, including Alan Cumming, Rosie O’Donnell, and the “Heartstopper” star Joe Locke.
Most of these disembodied voices are judgmental, as if to illustrate the minefield Mulvaney finds herself treading within. After considering what identity and pronouns best fit her, Mulvaney makes clear her respect and admiration for cisgender women, especially as they have long inspired her. More puzzling are the supposed rules around “trans palatability” she invokes. (Where and whom did these prohibitions come from?) The show also doesn’t explore Mulaney’s feelings about being so online when, in addition to building a huge fan base (she has 9 million TikTok followers), it has brought such a hurtful avalanche of prejudice.
Mulvaney is ultimately determined to keep it light — to skim the shallows where deeper, trickier self-interrogations would make for a very different show. The closing song’s refrain (which the audience is encouraged to sing along to) is: “I … am … a …woman …put into a gay man’s body who was born a man …but was actually supposed to be a woman, even though she was a man who is gay, but is still a woman who is straight, but also sometimes gay.”
This is both a dizzying descriptive tapestry and merrily defiant celebration of a many-shaded self. Palatability, Mulvaney has seemingly concluded, is a game best left to others.
The Least Problematic Woman in the World
Through Oct. 19 at the Lucille Lortel Theater, Manhattan; leastproblematicwoman.com. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes.
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