When Taylor Mac flounces into view in a shower of sequins and glitter, he/she is an astonishing vision of fun, festivity and bizarreness, like a cross between Puck from A Midsummer Night's Dream, and a punk rock geisha girl.

His latest show - The Be(a)st Of Taylor Mac - is part polemic, part performance art, a passionate, warm-hearted and witty pastiche of songs, monologues and spectacular outfits.

Oh - and a ukulele comes into the equation, too.

I wasn't sure what to expect when I was invited to his show at the Soho Theatre in London ahead of his date at Komedia. The pictures on his website are intriguing, yet almost nightmarish, at once spectacular and scary. But in the flesh Taylor Mac is the life and soul of the party, which, in this case was his audience - a lively mix of gay and straight men, beautiful people and the simply curious.

"Are there any heterosexuals in the audience?" asked Taylor Mac at one point, making a joke about the fact his show is billed as "universal". No one put their hand up.

Dragging an oversized suitcase into the spotlight, the instantly likeable Taylor Mac opens it up and proceeds to rifle through it for the duration of the show, throwing on a dazzling array of customised garments, from a dress made out of grubby, yellow, rubber gloves to neon fishnets and a tinsel headdress. All the while, he engages the audience in his colourful, funny and emotional commentary about life and love, in the end leaving us on a high acapella note: "There is nothing to fear but fear itself."

Meeting him in person several weeks later is a shock. Almost unrecognisable without his face paint and fabulous "finery", the 33-year-old New Yorker, dressed down in a pork pie hat, jeans and T-shirt, is so fresh-faced he could pass for 20.

Modest, relaxed and softly spoken, he occasionally breaks into giggles, his eyes light up and the camp charisma of his on-stage persona shines through.

"You don't learn drag, it's your calling!" he says with a faux dramatic flourish, before enthusiastically revealing there is more to his artistic intentions than cross-dressing.

"What has become known as traditional drag - impersonation, all about looking pretty and glamorous and fierce - that's not what I'm really doing. Although I love that and love to have that around me.

"I wanted to find a way to visually express how I feel. I'm not hiding behind a mask, I'm exposing what I look like inside."

Taylor's life began in Stockton, a suburban town in California. His father was an alcoholic and a drug addict who died when Taylor was three years old.

Although his mother remarried and later divorced, Taylor says he remembers his childhood as "just us - me, my sister and my mom".

"Aside from a period between five and nine that was a good, semi-healthy upbringing, I was miserable, living in this horrible place. It was very oppressive, this homogenised environment where everything had to be exactly the same, and people behaved the same, and there was this heavy social dictate happening throughout the small city.

"As I got older, I started to realise I was a major outsider. I had to either squash that down or fight for the rest of my life. I was harassed every day. It was not a pleasant experience growing up there."

Community theatre became an outlet for the teenage Taylor's creativity - but being gay was considered unacceptable.

"So I think what I'm doing now is a reaction to that upbringing," he says. "I'm trying to express myself and create great work that has as much variation in it as possible. Drag is incorporated into that concept. When you look at me in costume you see masculinity, femininity, you see beauty and ugliness. It's disgusting and it's graceful and it's chaotic - and it's unprofessional and totally professional. It's angry and sweet and kind - and all of it is squished together.

"Primarily what I want people to think about is variation, to explore what that means to them, why and when we have been reduced to this idea that everything has to be only that and not aaaaaaaaaaallllll of it."

After moving to New York, where he trained as a method actor, Taylor found himself frustrated by the audition process and lack of parts available "I was so unhappy with the notion you had to ask for permission to be creative," he says. "So laaaaaaaaaaaame! That never felt right to me.

I started writing and producing my own work and thought, I'm gonna be creative every single day of life'. My life got tremendously better after that decision."

Taylor soon became integrated into a close knit community of "outsider artists", many of whom featured as "sextras" in John Mitchell Cameron's excellent film, Shortbus, which ran at the Duke of York's earlier this year. "I felt as if I had found what I'd been looking for my whole life," he says.

The stories he tells in The Be(a)st Of Taylor Mac, and the experiences he shares, are not necessarily all about him. They might be about these friends, fellow performers such as burlesque sensation Dirty Martini, or his inspiration, the 65-year-old transvestite Mother Flawless Sabrina, or Scotty the Blue Bunny.

"I don't make stuff up," he says, "but I will cut and paste. I'll take stories I've heard and apply them to my life."

Despite the touching, often humorous and sometimes heartbreaking tales of dysfunctional flings, failed intimacy and lonely nights which he sings about in his show, Taylor has in fact been happily sharing his life and a studio apartment in New York with his architect boyfriend ("a real gem") for two-and-a-half years. Even he has trouble recognising Taylor on stage, post transformation.

"He loves my work," says Taylor, between bites of a bacon sandwich, "but he watches it and says I don't know who you are out there! I can't recognise you!' and I say It's meeeeeeee!' "

Not only a brilliant, metamorphosing make-up artist, Taylor Mac is also a talented political satirist, out to challenge Republican America, and shock people out of their preconceptions.

"I think the revolution is happening right now. The most subversive thing you can do, as a guy, is to put on a pair of high heels and reject this machismo bullying cr*p that is happening all around the world. It's a rejection of homogeneity and a rebellion against this thing where everything needs to be hip and right, and right and hip. I just find that so repulsive.

"I guess that's part of the reason why I play the ukulele in my show, because I wanted an instrument that was simple and human, but also kinda dorky! Though I play it like I'm a rock star!"

Taylor's "trani-activist brain" found its focus in the early-Nineties after he joined a group of 100 people and walked across America from New York to a nuclear test site, about 60 miles north of Las Vegas.

"There were all these political activists, anarchists, a lot of dyke activists. I really learned my politics from those dykes," he says.

"It was a wonderful, and miserable, experience, but it was more wonderful than anything else. We would walk every day to a different community and we would talk about the issues.

Just our presence alone was enough to stir things up. One hundred people who looked kind of freaky - and were walking 20 miles every day across the United States and camping out every night - to see that kind of everyday action happening gave me a sense of what grass roots action really is. I thought this is what I wanna do,' and I applied that to my theatre background.

"That's what theatre is, talking to a group of people who are sitting there, present in front of you, that's how I think you make an actual change. Lasting change is by human interaction."

While the show incorporates some hardhitting and complex material, both personal and political, Taylor, in his leopard print platform boots, does it with such pizzazz, it never feels heavy. Whatever subject he delves into, no matter how serious, he finds something silly inside it to laugh at. That's what makes his show a hit. It is a joyful performance, which he explains takes its inspiration from the archetype of the fool.

"A fool is somebody who speaks truths that other people can't speak. The first time I learned about that was reading Shakespeare. I wanna create work where I get to say things other people can't say. Not that people aren't saying the same thing I'm saying but I think people can't often hear it because those people aren't as fantastical looking. I present myself as the clown, the fool and then they are able to hear it because they are caught off guard. They don't expect people like me to say things that have merit to them; they just expect to be entertained.

"The thing about us as people is we only feel emotion when we are surprised by something.

The goal as a theatre artist is to surprise your audience as much as you can, so they are not quite sure what they are seeing. I just love that.

They look at me like What will I feel next - frustration, confusion or delight?'"

  • Starts 9.45pm, £12.50/£10.50.

Call 01273 647100.