“I AM preparing to transform myself into Mr Quentin Crisp,” actor and cult cabaret star Paul Capsis announces by phone from his dressing room at the Seymour Centre in Sydney.

“I’m only at my hair follicles so far – it’s all about the hair you know – and it’s a bit out of control, it needs some direction.”

At this stage of his extravagant maquillage, Capsis hardly knows whether he’s Paul or Quentin and, as we talk, he switches in and out of the voice and persona of the notorious Crisp, one of the 20th century’s most acerbic personalities and author of “The Naked Civil Servant” and “How to Become a Virgin”.

Crisp is the subject of the 1999 play “Resident Alien” by Michael Fountain, now heavily edited by director Gary Abrahams, to be performed by Capsis in a show coming to The Street Theatre. From his disgustingly filthy East Village apartment, the stage Crisp tells us how to be happy and shares his views on everything from Oprah to oral sex.

The similarities between Capsis and Crisp are obvious, both having successfully grappled with effeminate homosexuality from an early age.

But unlike him, Capsis tells me, Crisp could live without personal relationships and was not politically motivated – “he didn’t believe it made any difference”.

Vitriolic he was, but not entirely antisocial.

“Mr Crisp was extremely free with his time, he was listed in the phone books in both New York and London,” Capsis tells me.

Crisp, as the play will show, was notoriously slovenly, but had nearly $1 million in the bank when he died.

“He lived like a pauper because he knew how to,” says Capsis.

“I wish I could be a bit more like Mr Crisp; it’s my Maltese/Greek upbringing, I’m terrible, I can’t be without order, even in my dressing room.

“But I don’t remember the last time I’ve enjoyed myself so much, I spent months and months studying and researching him. His unusual philosophy and his epigrams are to die for.

“He spent all his spare time thinking them up and he was ready to quote himself up to the time of his passing at 91.”

Comparisons to Oscar Wilde infuriated Crisp, who believed that Wilde showed off in court, wrote “dreadful poetry” and, worst of all, was not an “authentic stylist”.

It’s time for Capsis, now sounding exactly like Quentin Crisp, to go on stage.

“I’ve managed to plaster my hair down with one hand and I’m all ready to go,” he says.

“Resident Alien”, The Street Theatre, July 27-August 7, bookings to thestreet.org.au or 6247 1223.