The Brooklyn Rail

You’ll hear DeliaDelia first.

Somewhere in the shadows, where witches are prone to linger, DeliaDelia will warn you she’s near with a screwy sound that reverberates somewhere between a cackle and tire screech. If shrieks could be warm, DeliaDelia’s signature noise is something like that—and with a fast-flickering vibrato opera students surely aim to unlock.

The call is other-worldly, like the swamp-born DeliaDelia—and Amando Houser’s talents. Houser is starring as and in DeliaDelia! The Flat-Chested Witch!, their solo show intimately at home at the Brick Theater through December 14. That venue’s coziness does mean, through DeliaDelia’s frequent crowd work, you might become her scene partner. Fear not: despite the pointy wand and G train–green skin, this witch is pretty harmless.

She mostly just wants a bud to pillow fight with, someone to hold her feet up while she does a keg (cauldron?) stand (guzzling, what else, Mountain Dew), and to finally make the girls’ basketball team—which is hard given her upbringing. Have you tried dribbling in a marsh?

Houser strings together these delicious bits of engagement throughout their hour-long show, directed by Kedian Keohan, who keeps the stage open and pacing leisurely so DeliaDelia can roam free. In lesser hands, a performance without much arc or structure would be lethal, but Houser is no wuss. DeliaDelia’s a witch of few words, but she’s got a mighty thick and contorting unibrow that can spell out the alphabet with just a few facial twists. With that kind of magic, a wand is superfluous.

Sporting patchy makeup and inky teeth so black Sharpie should sponsor them, Houser uses their stage persona as a vehicle for celebrating otherness. A trans-masc performer, Houser created DeliaDelia, in part, to personify the modern-day “witch hunt” on transgender rights in the United States. At one point, as DeliaDelia bemoans that witches have a harder time making the basketball team, she has the audience chant, “Be a real girl now.”

The metaphor doesn’t have to be airtight; this is a witch who’s swirling a wand up her nostril as if it were a COVID test. In not taking the act too seriously, DeliaDelia makes it easier for the audience to be down to clown.

The production showcases more than just Houser’s talents; a rotating cast of indie New York gems (Becca Blackwell and Claywoman among them) open for the main act, offering audiences a new trans performer to get to know or revisit at each show.

With their shorter sets, it’d be hard to upstage DeliaDelia. However, when she asks, holding a basketball, “Do you wanna see what I can do?” and elicits a resounding “yes” from the crowd, only to bounce the ball under her leg, you might wish for more enchantment.

Then again, how many witches have soared to the WNBA? With DeliaDelia at the charge, perhaps more will make the team.