Drag Baby!, The Pleasance Theatre Review
Written by Charlotte for Theatre & Tonic
Disclaimer: Gifted tickets in exchange for an honest review.
Grace Carroll’s Drag Baby returns with timely vibrance after a work-in-progress run at the King’s Head in 2022. Set in the dressing room of a dingey drag club, the show centres on thirty-something, fame-obsessed drag queen Dan and his estranged ex-girlfriend Sally who has come to him with a weighty request: to be the sperm donor for her and her girlfriend.
Carroll’s characters are vividly crafted, infused with a refreshing amount of messiness that elevates the piece to a level of authenticity that is rarely achieved. There is no single character in Drag Baby who gets to be the sympathetic one, no individual who earns the audience’s favour and keeps it. And yet each, in their own manner, has a glimmer of truth so resonant that they hold at least a kernel of your goodwill.
In a slick seventy-five minutes, Drag Baby confronts a number of quite complex issues in the contemporary queer community. Dan’s friend and dressing roommate Nathan acts as a distinct generational foil Dan’s ‘old-world’ drag. Where Dan spends the show in heavy drag makeup and plentiful padding lip-syncing to the likes of Dolly Parton, Nathan pointedly declares that they can ‘do androgyny,’ performing several far more politically-charged, avant-garde numbers without any wig or padding and much more understated makeup. Both are brilliant performers, but their modes are from such different worlds that conflict has no choice but to arise between them. While Dan eagerly leaps at the chance to enter the mainstream and have the things ‘normal’ people do, Nathan condemns his desire to exit the queer underground where they can be free of such expectations. Despite their similar experiences with intolerant upbringings, each approaches liberation from an entirely different lens. Carroll’s careful wielding of these two characters shows masterful consciousness of the divides in the modern queer landscape, but even more saliently, of the ties that enduringly bind us all the same.
Lu Herbert’s design beautifully elevates every aspect of Carroll’s nuanced script. The meticulous contrast in Dan and Nathan’s costuming is also present in Sally and her girlfriend Sandra’s. Each element, be it a sequined-jacket or a cellophone lanyard, adds its own bit of context and personality. The glitzy-yet-shabby dressing room set is overflowing with intimate glimpses into Dan’s character and comfortable frames for the moment-in-time conversations that make up the heart of the story. The expansion of the set into the theatre, pride protest signs and posters of the expected divas plastered across the walls, mirrors standing in aisles, and alcohol bottles stashed about the seats, envelops the audience completely in the play’s world, perhaps even prompting us to question where we may fall within it.
While its greatest weakness may well be its ending, if only for its lack of a distinctly final beat, Drag Baby still hits its mark as a boldly performed, tightly written, and richly compelling play. With equal capacity for hilarity and reflection, it’s an achievement in drama that is clearly, successfully, and resolutely by queer artists for queer audiences.
At Pleasance London until 22 Jun.
☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
