fringe: drags aloud at the movies

While usually they say that you should save the best for last, sometimes it turns out to be the exact opposite...

Tonight was one of those nights.

Not only was Drags Aloud At The Movies my last scheduled Fringe show, but it was also the last show of the night in that particular theatre... and when you stop and think about it, there's probably a reason why they put shows on in the very latest spot...

I posed a question earlier on Twitter about whether or not you need to be drunk to be a drag queen... but I think perhaps it's more that if you act like you're drunk when you're offstage you can get away with more...

Anyway, I pulled the same trick as last night and as soon as I saw somebody else line up, I hopped in line behind them, and ended up in the front row.

I've seen drag shows before... granted I've probably seen shows by the same drag queens (Adelaide institutions, Fifi and Rochelle) far more often than I've seen shows by other drag queens... but I'm more than familiar with drag shows.

But I have to say that with a couple of minor rays of sunshine, the whole show was more than a little "m'eh"!

I understand why they chose to use a projector and pre-filmed sections while they duck out and get changed, but the quality was pretty damn horrible and the sound was totally out of sync... and for the most part, it wasn't really that funny. Actually that's the main problem that I had with a lot of the show... it was okay, but it wasn't really that funny.

And if the rest of the audience had been really getting into it then I might have chalked it up to just being me, but nobody else seemed to be falling down laughing either.

Like I said though, there were some parts that were reasonably okay... the whole Wizard of Oz section was nicely done, in fact they probably would have spun that out into an entire show and it may have worked. Also, the dumpy little drag queen (I don't remember any names, just that there was a dumpy one, a pretty one, an old one and a ditzy one) did the "Manamana" song in a truly insane costume that was actually quite amusing.

And the "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" number at the end wasn't bad... even if one of them did nearly kill herself falling backwards over a loose board.

The whole thing just seemed kinda "low rent", which is surprising when you see some of the stuff on the website, which seem much more glamourous... or maybe it all just looks that way from a distance, and the front row is much too close to sustain the illusion.

Oh, and I had my face thrust into a drag queen's bosom... oddly enough that's not the first time I've had my head thrust into part of a drag queen's anatomy.

All in all though, I'm rating this "lukewarm".

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