Judging by the expensive cologne levels I encountered when I entered the Space Theatre, my mind wandered to the famous quote from gay icon Bette Davis in All About Eve: “Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy night.”

San Franciscan native Dylan Adler’s one-man show, Haus of Dy-Lan (pronounced “Die-Larn, bitches”), is an autobiographical salad of comic monologue and song, where the base ingredient is outrageous humour mixed with sprinkles of poignancy.

Dylan Adler: Haus of Dylan. Photo © Claudio Raschella

Adler’s story begins at his school concert at the age of 12, where his musical talent and love of the spotlight sprang forth. Yet Adler’s naivety and sexual innocence at that age shielded him from an audience consisting of those laughing at him and with him in equal measure. It was not until a fedora-wearing Seth and his peers bullied him at school two years later that Adler realised the world could be an unsafe space.

Fortunately, home was a sanctuary. Blessed with a gay twin brother, a mother akin to Samantha in Sex and the City, a Japanese grandmother who taught him the piano and knew he was...