★★★★☆ Paul Capsis captures the infamous raconteur Quentin Crisp with forensic precision.

Fortyfivedownstairs, Melbourne
May 26, 2016

In the gloaming light of a dilapidated hovel, a wizened, desiccated figured in a filthy bathrobe sits on a stained mattress. His features are shrivelled and drawn; angular bones stretched over with skin the texture of week-old fish. Untamed hair clings to this haggard character’s head, both its colour and spurious volume announcing its synthetic origins. Dirty bandages wind their way around bony limbs and clawed hands; death can’t be far away. It’s a hopeless scene, bleak, toxic and utterly repulsive.

This could be the set up for a Beckett-ian dystopia, but remarkably, this is art imitating life, specifically that of infamous queer raconteur Quentin Crisp. He was a character so complex and colourful, that his existence seemed to be played out in endless contradictions. Known for his florid styling, foppish wardrobe and acidic critique on the human condition, his effeminate fashions and aristocratic vocabulary masked the pigpen poverty of his home life. In Tim Fountain’s Crisp biopic, Resident Alien, we meet him in 1999, aged 90, possibly in the final days of his life. Living in a...