Brian Merriman, artistic director of the Dublin Gay Theatre Festival, introduced Who Does She Think She Is? as one of the most radical productions on offer in the festival: the first transgender musical in Ireland. It was a one-off show, on in the back of the Front Lounge, free to all, and done in the best possible community spirit. There was no programme, so forgive me for not knowing anyone’s names. When the excellent keyboard player, a zany man with hairy legs and a skirt, played everyone in with a little Brechtian number, with a quip that the show was going to be a bit like “spot the pre-op”, I thought I was going to be in for a comic treat. In the end, I was disappointed, and more than a little annoyed.I know I should not be overly critical about this show. It was basically a group of people from a minority that has a very hard time of it in Ireland, who decided to put a lot of time and effort into putting on some free entertainment. I have enjoyed amateur shows before, very much, and I invariably leave cheered up because, like karaoke, the experience is not really about talent, but heart.

But what a cold, twisted heart was beating in this show. The central storyline: a woman, suffering from post-natal depression, left her five-week-old baby, Karl, in the care of her husband, and emigrated to the US, married again, and never saw them again. We see her returning, nearly twenty-one years later, in search of the child she abandoned, who has just got a job as a security guard in McBirney’s department store. In her main monologue, set bizarrely in a church, she is bitter at how her second husband “tried to suppress her spirit too”, so she took him to the cleaners in the divorce court; despite the fact that she was still married to her first husband. But she is unapologetic. She’s glad she went to America, otherwise she’d have ended up like her – and she points with disgust at a woman scrubbing the church floor. “At least she speaks English” she says, in a “comic” aside. “These non-nationals are everywhere, they’re taking over the place”. In the reunion with her enraged husband, she sings in explanation how she walked out the door, not wanting to “live a lie”. She hurls abuse at Karl’s stepmother. When she is just about to meet her son, she says that she’s not worried that he won’t like her, it’s more that she mightn’t like him. When she sees that he’s a mawkish melancholy lad, she snaps at him, “why can’t you grow up, and think about me?” It’s a funny line, but by then I’d long ceased to see the joke.

If only this Frankenstein’s monster of a human being, this cruel, snide, narcissistic, victimy, fraudulent, self-aggrandizing, child-abandoning, xenophobic, bigoted bigamist bitch was being sent up in this show, I would have found it funny. But, to my horror, I think this heartless woman was being celebrated, in this poorly thought-out script. Or, whoever was playing her was being celebrated – for in amateur theatre, of course, the personalities of the players are known by the audience, which adds to the in-joke. The curious thing is that the character was played so defiantly and earnestly, without a hint of irony, but with a sour sort of pettiness, that it wasn’t camp. A monstrous bitch can be a fabulous comic creation, but only if she’s camp, and knowing, pace the ballsy Joan Collins in Dynasty.

There were plenty of other characters played by an energetic cast of six, and whoever played Mr Jay, manager of McBirney’s, is a little singing and dancing bundle of talent, reminiscent of Stubby Kaye in Sweet Charity. The rest acquitted themselves admirably, although they could have done with a microphone between them.

In this show, the jokes, the cultural references, were oddly, pervily, heterosexual; a leering Mr Jay sniffs the coat collar of Jenny, a woman who is hoping he’ll employ her, Karl’s buxom stepmother tries to have her wicked way with her little balding husband, Karl’s Dad, who has difficulty saying “no” to her. It’s The Benny Hill Show. Unreconstructed. From the 1970s. Please don’t tell me that I should make any allowances for the quality of a script because the writers are transgendered. And making cheap jokes about foreigners? I couldn’t believe my ears. Do I need to point out, as if it mattered, that, among others, there were Polish and Dutch people in the audience? (Including a newlywed lesbian couple from Amsterdam, here on honeymoon at the Dublin Gay Theatre Festival.) I was embarrassed.

Only two or three of the six actors would “pass” on the street in their chosen gender; the rest would raise questions or doubts, which does of course put them in danger. Nevertheless, it wasn’t a catwalk or a freak show, it was an exercise in community morale-boosting, visibility and solidarity, and it must have done them a power of good. In principle they have every right to be included in the festival, as Brian Merriman’s interpretation of the word “gay” includes everyone in the rainbow alphabet of LGBTQ. Next time, however, I’m not sure I’ll be so willing to extend my support to this group, Shopfloor Productions, unless they can at least show some heart, some irony, and the barest minimum of respect for the sensitivity of others.