self serviceA “homemade, DIY, flat-pack, punk cabaret on the theme of queer”? By Total Theatre Award-nominated company Milk Presents? Close to midnight in an old church? Sure.

Lucy, Ruby and Adam are wearing tight, tight gold lycra leggings, blonde wigs, lace and long pink eyelashes. It’s difficult to tell if it’s queer yet, because they haven’t told us what it means, but it’s certainly camp.

After a song that starts to address the idea of queer, Milk explains to the audience what cabaret is: it aims to simultaneously entertain and subvert. Their act is entertaining, certainly, but it’s not really subverting – the meaning of queer is getting lost in triviality and comments about rimming Alex Salmond.

Occasionally they hit upon something powerful: Adam pours liquid from a protein shaker into a pink martini glass, Lucy and Ruby tell misogynistic jokes in a cheerful manner accompanied by light elevator music, and the three performers lip synch to recordings of members of the public who have been asked what they think queer means. An old lady, with a hint of resignation, says “we’ve got to accept gays and lesbians because that’s the way of life now, and they seem to be getting on well because we’re letting them get married”. But there is a lot of meaninglessness to endure for the good stuff.

In the quest for queer, Milk mocks John Lewis, mortgages, Cath Kidston and pensions. There seems to be a general confusion as they move from exploring queerness to satirising homophobia, except they have confused homophobes with just the middle class in general. The conclusion they reach is that queer can be anything to anyone as long as you’re being yourself – as long as you’re the author of your own individual expression. Dress how you want, love whom you like, be what you want to be. As long as you’re a liberal, it doesn’t matter. So, being queer is just being a hipster.

In Edinburgh during the Fringe, where a cross-dressing man is about the most normal thing you’ll see all day, this is preaching to a choir that’s really clued up on scripture.

Milk Presents: Self Service is at Northern Stage at King’s Hall (Venue 73) until 23 August. For more information and tickets visit the Ed Fringe website.