Church Lady Drag

Go To Church. The Cavern Club Theater. 4/16/06.

I was pretty excited to be spending Easter going to what I believed was a church-themed drag show in the basement of a Mexican restaurant with some of the people I've come to consider almost family. It felt queer and appropriate and subversive and wonderful. It was also a great warm-up for our upcoming Backyard Drag show whose theme was to be "High Church."

Sadly, "Go To Church" didn't live up to the appropriateness of the situation. It was more performance art than drag, which isn't necessarily a bad thing in my mind; the real disappointment was that after the first number, it rather lost its theme. It included several numbers and skits that had very little to do with church, including an interesting but inexplicable rendition of "Paper Roses" and an actually pretty funny talk show piece called "Two Jans and a Janet" featuring Selene Luna and the only cross-dressing of the night by Robbie D. The two of them made a great pair, but this closing bit went on a little too long. For the most part, the show felt like one big inside joke and some of the bits were funny but several of them seemed as if they were just filling up time. As this was their first of a series of performances, it felt a bit under-reheased and thrown together. Their next performance will feature drag queen Jackie Beat who I've heard is excellent and thus the show might get better, but personally I was disappointed. I rather suspect each of the performers has done and could do better work. I would have been happy if they had just managed to keep it all church-themed.