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October 19, 2018November 27, 2018

THE GALLERY: Dragpunk presents Drag Me to Hell! @ The Nightingale Club 12.10.18

Words by Anna Cash Davidson / Pics by Sarah Maiden

On Friday 12th October, Dragpunk hosted their Drag Me to Hell! show at The Nightingale Club, the oldest and most popular LGBTQ venue in Birmingham, running since 1969.

Dragpunk are a collective that ‘aim to promote LGBTQ art, awareness and confidence’ in Birmingham, bringing together drag (‘a creative art for anyone regardless of their gender, sexual identity and orientation’) and punk (‘an expressive, individual freedom that is anti-establishment and anti-mainstream society’). The show is hosted by Lilith and features the whole Dragpunk collective – Tacky Alex, Paul Aleksandr, Amber Cadaverous – with appearances from Cosmic Crum, Tanja McKenzie, Eva Serration, and special guest Ruby Wednesday.

The venue has limited seating capacity, so I take a standing position – managing to find a spot not obstructed from view by drag queens in 6-inch heels. The stage is decorated in full Halloween pantomime galore, littered with fake candles and furnished with red drapes, skulls and a crystal ball. As we wait for the 9:30 pm start time, eerie music plays in the background that takes me back to theme parks of my childhood, and this theatricality is only increased by the smoke machine that alerts us that the performance has begun.

Our host for the evening is Lilith, who stuns in a Gothic bride get-up, complete with a black veil, delivering us humorous one-liners throughout the evening, with her interjections providing a break from the intensity of some of the performances. The narrative of the performance follows Lilith summoning dead spirits with her crystal ball and there is everything you want from a Halloween drag show, with Frankenstein’s bride, Salem witch trials, Ouija boards and light dose of devil-worship.

Cosmic Crum bursts through the crowd and all I can see are the horns on his head until he reaches the stage, and the two men he has on a leash become visible. Crum pours blood on them and they lick it off each other, whilst ‘Seven Nation Army’ plays in the background. Tacky Alex brings some clownish joy to the stage, lip-syncing Tiny Tim’s ‘Living in the Sunlight’, whilst Paul Aleksandr gives us a dramatic rendition of Eurythmics ‘Sweet Dreams (Are Made of These)’. “Wasn’t that intense?” quips Lilith during the interlude.

Popular music plays a key part throughout the show tonight, with Celine Dion’s ‘My Heart Will Go On’ and Kiss’ ‘I Was Made for Lovin’ You’ also featuring. Less popular numbers include a devil-worship song (with the lyrics ‘praise the devil’) in Tanja Mckenzie’s performance, with the Satanic as a clear running theme. Towards the end, Lilith uses a Ouija board to help her summon our final spirits for the evening.

Stand-out performances include Eva Serration’s depiction of Frankenstein’s creature and bride told as a feminist revenge story, lip syncing to a speech from recent TV series Penny Dreadful. “Never again will I kneel to any man. Now they shall kneel to me. As you do, monster,” we hear, before she rips off his head and her own white shapeless dress, revealing a red corset and fishnets as a sign of her new freedom.

The final performance of the evening is Ruby Wednesday, whose refreshing take on drag is particularly striking in a pinstripe suit, eyeliner, heels. and wigless – blurring the lines even further between gender. Ruby Wednesday ends the night with sparks flying, literally, sending us off with an angle grinder in an impressive display, in keeping with the drama of the evening.

Overall, it is an enjoyable night, bringing together people of all ages, genders and sexualities in an entertaining show, leaving us never quite knowing what to expect next. I think it’s time to start planning my Halloween costume…

Dragpunk presents Drag Me to Hell! @ The Nightingale Club 12.10.18 / Sarah Maiden

For more on the Dragpunk Collective, visit www.facebook.com/dragpunkcollective

For more from The Nightingale Club, including full event listings and online ticket sales, visit www.nightingaleclub.co.uk

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NOT NORMAL – NOT OK is a campaign to encourage safety and respect within live music venues, and to combat the culture of sexual assault and aggression – from dance floor to dressing room.

To sign up to NOT NORMAL – NOT OK, click here. To know more about the NOT NORMAL – NOT OK sticker campaign, click here.

October 11, 2018

BPREVIEW: Dragpunk presents Drag Me to Hell! @ The Nightingale Club 12.10.18

Words by Ed King

On Friday 12^th October, the Dragpunk collective are back for another show – returning to The Nightingale with Drag Me to Hell!

Appearing at Drag Me to Hell! will be the whole Dragpunk collective – Amber Cadaverous, Paul Aleksandr, Tacky Alex, with Lilith as the evening’s hostess – joined by Cosmic Crum, Tanja McKenzie, and Eva Serration.

There will also be a special guest appearance from Ruby Wednesday, who is flying The Familyyy Fierce nest for a night to sit glacier cherry style on the evening’s proceedings in Birmingham.

Doors open at The Nightingale Club from 8:30pm, with Drag Me to Hell! starting from 9:30pm prompt – running until the 16+ curfew ends at 11pm. Tickets are priced at a super reasonable £3 (adv) and £5 (otd), with entry to the official after party included if you’re old enough to go. Or brave enough, this is a ‘Halloween Theatre Show’ after all…

For direct links to online ticket sales for Drag Me to Hell! visit Eventbrite by clicking here. Or for more information on the show, visit the Facebook Event page by clicking here.

Dragpunk Presents’ first show back in April, Candyland, was a showcase of the collective’s great, good and covered in condiments – ‘showcasing local and national UK drag of all genders, sexualities and abilities that you’ll adore!’ Check out Emily Doyle’s illustrated Birmingham Review of Candyland by clicking here.

But there’s more to Dragpunk that shock, horror, and baking ingredients abuse – the local ‘collective of creative queer-minded people’ are strong advocates for artistry and inclusivity, promoting shows that create ‘a safe space for self-expression’ for every friendly face that attends.

Dragpunk’s latest offering, Drag Me to Hell! is also a shimmy/shake into more theatrical territory, with the set piece showcase conveyor belt making way for a narrative led production.

“We want to give a solid Halloween show,” explains Dragpunk’s Paul Aleksandr, “full of atmosphere with some very cool and well thought out performances, from horror to some creepy tongue-in-cheek comedy. It’s the start of something different for drag Birmingham drag shows.”

Sounds like a night out to me, one the show’s promo rhetoric says ‘will take you back to the times of Victorian darkness, bringing drag performances and theatre together, where spirits, demons, and some good ol’ camp horror will bring the night alive! Quite literally!’

Ah, you’ve got to love Halloween for the marriage of performance and art, and Dragpunk have never been afraid of a bit of needle and thread. If you’ve ever seen Aleksandr’s ‘Hungry Caterpillar’ costume…

Dragpunk Presents: Drag Me to Hell! at The Nightingale Club on Friday 12^th October. For direct links to online ticket sales for Drag Me to Hell!, visit Eventbrite by clicking here. Or for more information on the show, visit the Facebook Event page by clicking here.

For more on the Dragpunk Collective, visit www.facebook.com/dragpunkcollective

For more from The Nightingale Club, including full event listings and online ticket sales, visit www.nightingaleclub.co.uk

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NOT NORMAL – NOT OK is a campaign to encourage safety and respect within live music venues, and to combat the culture of sexual assault and aggression – from dance floor to dressing room.

To sign up to NOT NORMAL – NOT OK, click here. To know more about the NOT NORMAL – NOT OK sticker campaign, click here.

May 1, 2018May 1, 2018

BREVIEW: Opulence Presents Mother’s Meeting with Charity Kase @ Bar Jester 28.04.18

Words & illustrations by Emily Doyle

Opulence promised a brand new performance night with Mother’s Meeting and the people have turned out for it. Drag fans fill the basement of Bar Jester, staring expectantly at the mural of nude men that decorates the back of the stage.

Dahliah Rivers welcomes the crowd. She wears a gold floor length art deco style dress, and fiery red hair tumbles down her shoulders.

Jenna Davinci is first to perform. She begins lip syncing to Hi Fashion’s ‘Amazing’, which is interrupted by Meryl Streep’s iconic ‘Cerulean’ monologue from The Devil Wears Prada. By the time Davinci is gesticulating along to Milk’s ‘Touch the Fashion’, a clear theme has emerged. Despite all this, she looks perfectly at home in horizontal stripes.

Jay Andre bounces on stage to the opening bars of Grimes’ electro-pop anthem ‘Kill V. Maim’ to the delight of the crowd. Her fishnet bodysuit is trimmed with a fringe of plastic spikes; they rustle as she dances, bristling like cheerleader pom poms. Andre‘s routine is excitable and high energy – a fitting tribute to Grimes herself.

Nora Virus wears a chintz bodysuit with a face hood, complete with a red collar and matching fishnet tights. Her melding of twee florals and skintight fetishwear results in a look that can only be described as Cath Clubkidston. Virus razzle-dazzles the audience with a routine to Victoria Wood’s ‘The Ballad of Barry and Freda’. During the week, Virus puzzled her online followers by asking around for a sturdy tea trolley. It all makes sense when, as Wood’s vocals surge over the PA, Virus comes careening across the stage on one:

“This folly, is jolly,

Bend me over backwards on me hostess trolley.

Let’s do it, let’s do it tonight!”

I caught up with Virus after the show and asked what had inspired her inaugural Mother’s Meeting performance.

“When we came up with the name, my first thoughts were of 1950’s housewives at a Tupperware party, enjoying afternoon tea. I’m a huge Victoria Wood fan, she’s an absolute legend, and I stumbled across ‘The Ballad of Barry and Freda’, which I hadn’t heard for years! I couldn’t stop laughing and instantly knew I wanted to perform this. The whole idea just seemed fucked up. I’d be lip syncing to something your mom and dad would be laughing at back in the day, but dressed like something they’d have nightmares about.”

Closing the opening set of the night, Charity Kase makes her first appearance. In the advent of Ru Paul’s Drag Race the term ‘sickening’ has been thrown around to describe some drag looks. But in this instance it seems justified: Kase wears a floor length nun’s habit, but her face is a mess of grimy bandages.

Followers of her work will have been expecting an element of horror tonight, but no one can have been ready for this. Makeup obscures her mouth and eyes, so they appear as gaping holes. To the sounds of ‘Stay’ by Shakespeare’s Sister she tears off her costume, revealing an inverted cross chained to her chest. Kase looms over the shrouded cadaver she wheeled on stage with her, and with a flash of red light tears into it with a sickle. When she steps back, she is holding a blood drenched appendage aloft. No prizes for guessing what appendage that might be…

After a much needed interval, hostess Dahliah Rivers treats the crowd to a glittering routine ‘Raise the Roof’ from Andrew Lippa’s 1997 musical The Wild Party. It seems a fitting choice to kick off the second set, and Rivers luxuriates in the glamour of it.

Elliott Barnicle emerges from the DJ booth to do a number. He struts across the stage in his trademark silver leotard to the sugar-sweet pop of Little Mix’s ‘Hair’. The performance continues on a theme, with snippets of Brooke Candy’s ‘Don’t Touch My Hair Hoe’, Alaska Thunderfuck’s ‘This Is My Hair’, and Willow Smith’s ‘Whip My Hair’. The last of these sees Barnicle, who is as usual sporting his boyish haircut, produce a handful of blonde extensions and whirl them around.

No mother’s meeting would be complete without an appearance from Birmingham’s own drag matriarch, Yshee Black. Although it’s a Saturday night, Black has graced us with her Sunday best for a gospel inspired number. She sets off her blue suit-dress with a matching eye shadow. Her rousing performance is the perfect penultimate act of the night.

Returning to close the show, Charity Kase wears a pink satin nightgown and carries a Nestle Dairy Box aloft. The top half of her face is a disconcerting mask. Shanks & Bigfoot’s ‘Sweet Like Chocolate’ begins to play. She saunters through the crowd towards the stage, flipping her Barbie-blonde ringlets in the faces of audience members. She offers the box of chocolates around before stuffing them into her mouth by the handful.

Throughout the lip sync, Kase goes on to consume multiple bars of Galaxy. The majority of these are produced from the depths of her frilly white underwear, and spat out again at the audience. She manages not to miss a beat of the song. When the track finishes she is sprawled on the stage, covered in melted chocolate. The next morning I find a lump of partially chewed fudge on my shoe.

The Mother’s Meeting crowd file out onto the Queensway. In true maternal fashion, Nora Virus is diligently checking that all the audience are either part of her flock heading to the The Nightingale or are getting home safely. Later, I get her thoughts on Charity Kase.

“Charity blew me away. Both performances were so well thought out. I’m always here for the strange and unusual! I’m a queer kid in both meanings of the word and she is right up my alley…”

Opulence have pulled it off tonight. I ask Virus what’s next for the group.

“Opulence are a real diverse bunch of queens. We have theatre queens, comedy queens, deathdrop bitches, the lot. You want variety, we got it honey! No two Mother’s Meetings will ever be the same. We plan to showcase the best of U.K drag in Birmingham, as well as other styles of performance. You just wait to see who we have for Mother’s Meeting part two.”

For more on Charity Kase, visit www.charitykase.co.uk

For more from Opulence, visit www.facebook.com/opulencebirmingham

For more from Bar Jester, visit www.barjester.co.uk

April 27, 2018April 27, 2018

BPREVIEW: Opulence Presents Mother’s Meeting with Charity Kase @ Bar Jester 28.04.18

Words by Emily Doyle

On Saturday 28^th April, Birmingham’s party collective Opulence launch their brand new night, Mother’s Meeting. In honour of the inaugural event, Opulence are bringing avant garde queen and Instagram darling Charity Kase to Birmingham, for a night of performance at Bar Jester on the Queensway in Birmingham City Centre.

Doors open for Opulence Presents Mother’s Meeting at Bar Jester from 9pm, with performers scheduled to go on stage from 10pm. Tickets are priced at £4 (adv) and £4 (otd) – for direct event information and links to online ticket sales, click here.

London based artist Charity Kase gained recognition when they carried out the ‘365 Days of Drag’ challenge, a feat that won Kase the Queen of the U.K 2017 Award through WERRRK.COM. This saw the 21-year-old art student produce a new look every day for a year.

The completed gallery can be found on their website, where looks inspired by horror films and children’s toys nestle alongside the abstract and the political. Each character comes with their own snippet of a story, which could be a taste of what live audiences can expect at Mother’s Meeting. Kase’s art also spills over into their own DIY clothing label, Upperkase.

As part of their mission to showcase Birmingham’s diverse drag culture, Opulence have laid on an impressive line-up of support acts. Opulence’s own Jay Andre, Dahliah Rivers, Jenna Davinci, Yshee Black and Nora Virus will also be taking the stage, while Elliot Barnicle will be serving up his bold, graphic looks from the DJ booth. Altogether, the Mother’s Meeting crowd can expect another fresh addition to Birmingham’s burgeoning drag scene.

Opulence Presents Mother’s Meeting at Bar Jester on Saturday 28^th April, with Charity Kase as the headline act – joined by a troupe of Opulence’s own performers. For direct event info and links to online ticket sales, click here.

For more on Charity Kase, visit www.charitykase.co.uk

For more from Bar Jester, visit www.barjester.co.uk

For more from Opulence, visit www.facebook.com/opulencebirmingham

April 19, 2018April 19, 2018

BREVIEW: Dragpunk Presents Candyland @ The Nightingale Club 06.04.18

Words & illustrations by Emily Doyle

On Friday 6^th April, queer art collective Dragpunk took over the middle floor of The Nightingale Club. This was the venue for their brand new performance night, Dragpunk Presents. For the uninitiated, we caught up with host Amber Cadaverous – who began by explaining the origins of the group’s name.

The ‘drag’ in Dragpunk recognises that, “drag artistry is the expressive and creative art for anyone regardless of their gender, sexual identity and orientation,” tells Cadaverous, “it knows no gender but subverts and mocks all gender and art norms.” The collective’s values of “expressive, individual freedom that is anti-establishment and anti-mainstream society,” are where the ‘punk’ comes in.

“Whether your interest is makeup, performance art, drag art, queer politics, or you’re simply in need of a safe space for fun, self-expression, and excitement, we want to provide this,” continues Cadaverous. “We plan and run all events as safe space for those across the LGBTQ+ community and allies. We only encourage fun and freedom – dress how you want and be who you want. We welcome all of those who just want to feel the love of a community.

Birmingham is our home, and Birmingham is brimming with art and creativity that needs an outlet and a voice.”

The theme for tonight is Candyland. Paul Aleksandr runs the door. Head to toe in neon pink, complete with bedazzled facial hair, he offers cakes and sweets to guests as they arrive. Hands are stamped and drinks are bought.

Around midnight, Cadaverous totters on stage. She wears platform heels, a paint splattered prom dress, and an enormous purple wig topped with an even bigger pink bow. Her face is painted with a Glasgow smile and heavily lined eyes, but her excitement about the evening shines through. She welcomes and introduces fellow Dragpunk, Lilith.

Lilith looks like she’s stepped straight out of your MySpace top friends from 2004. She’s dressing up a cinched and contoured club kid look with buckets of kimo-kawaii accessories. A dynamic routine to Blood on the Dance Floor’s ‘Candyland’ sets the tone (and the pace) for the night. Strobe lights illuminate her backcombed wig.

Eva Lution follows, serving a look described by Cadaverous as “glamour granny”. Her glamour is certainly timeless, as she performs the evening’s most articulate lip sync to ‘A Spoonful of Sugar’. Lution’s floor length gown ripples across the stage. It looks effortless, but the costume designer and fashion student later confirms that it was sewn by her own fair hands. When the music switches to Def Leppard, Lution shrugs the gown to the floor. She reveals fishnets and thigh high boots. This girl is no granny.

Ginny Lemon brings a change of pace to the stage next. Some may remember Lemon from an appearance on ITV’s X Factor in 2017, or perhaps from her regular turn as a host at The Village Inn on Hurst Street. Either way, her face is not one you’ll forget in a hurry. Looking like the bastard daughter of Marge Simpson and Velma from Scooby Doo, Lemon emerges from the DJ booth gesticulating along to Tori Amos’ ‘Sugar’ followed by ‘Candy Shop’ by Madonna. These go down like a delicious citrusy treat with the crowd, but her original composition (an a cappella ode to biscuits) is even better.

After a short interval, the room fills again for Mama Mamba. The 2017 winner of Church of Yshee has set the bar high. She perches on the side of the stage, legs bound into a mermaid tail. The room goes quiet. ‘Part of Your World’ from The Little Mermaid fades in.

Mamba flirts with the crowd, winking and pouting throughout the lipsync while she’s photographed. She checks her flawless makeup in a shell-shaped mirror and combs a fork through her turquoise hair. Slowly, she pulls herself up onto her fins and shimmies out of the tail, flaunting the best bum on Birmingham’s drag scene. Mamba struts across the stage in a iridescent miniskirt, and when the song reaches its falsetto climax she gleefully removes her seashell bra to reveal matching nipple tassels. It’s what Walt Disney would have wanted.

A new face on the local scene, Stormy Carl’s creator describes her as “a messy woman zoomed in on.” She wears a pink satin slip which clashes against her emerald curls. If you look down, pink stripy socks peep out the top of her platform sandals. Carl has taken the evening’s theme and run with it, crafting a playful mix for her routine that features Aqua, Austin Powers, and a smattering of Spongebob Squarepants dialogue.

She drizzles caramel over herself and throws her sticky dress to the ground, untangling it from her feet as the room takes in her pink paisley bikini. Her athletic, chaotic routine leaves the crowd wondering where she’s been hiding.

We caught up with Stormy Carl after the show for a few words. As one of Dragpunk’s female performers, she had a few words on the role of women within the scene:

“Drag at its core, to me anyways, is just about playing dress up,” explains Carl. “Historically it was a way to entertain and escape from society. You can be ANYONE in drag: yourself, an egg, a celebrity, or just whatever you perceive as beautiful. I like to take the idea of ‘woman’ that society has constructed and just times it by 100.”

Nora Virus opens the third and final set of the evening. A key player in Birmingham’s club kid community, Virus is a part of the Opulence collective and founder of another new drag event coming to Birmingham, Mother’s Meeting. Wearing a cropped, tie dye t-shirt and candy floss pink wig, she delights in completely desecrating ‘Pure Imagination’ from 1971’s Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

Beckoning fellow artist Liam Layland from the crowd, Virus invites him to reach inside the large, plush doughnut strapped around her waist and try his luck. What follows can’t be repeated here, but it ends with them skipping off stage together to the tune of ‘I’ve Got a Golden Ticket’.

Self-described ‘burlesquer and activist’, Petite, is a bundle of cardigan and big frothy petticoats. She dances to Jackie Wilson’s fitting ‘Reet Petite’, grinning at the crowd. This saccharine tone quickly dissolves when ‘Pour Some Sugar on Me’ starts playing for the second time this evening.

Petite takes this more literally than Eva Lution did and strips down to lingerie before liberally pouring a whole a bag of Tate & Lyle over her body. When the song’s over, the performers all scrabble to clear the floor of sugar, whipped cream, and cupcake crumbs in time for the final act.

The fourth and final member of the Dragpunk collective, Tacky Alex, is here to close the night. Joined on stage by Stormy Carl and Mama Mamba for a choreographed routine to Katy Perry’s ‘California Girls’, Alex begins pulling audience members up to join them. After the show, Amber Cadaverous picked this out as the highlight of her night.

“It felt so silly and fun but had a real community vibe and spirit; everyone was laughing and smiling. It just felt so right!“

It seems a fitting ending to a night celebrating the playful and inclusive nature of drag as an art form; everyone left feeling pleased to see the Dragpunk team pull it off.

”There is always something really magic about seeing all your plans come to life,” Cadaverous agrees. “Our ‘Presents’ night is going to be regular throughout the year, each time with a new theme and a production showcasing local and national UK drag of all genders, sexualities and abilities… expect us to release the next theme and line up shortly! As well as our performance night we also run a queer alternative party called I’m Not Okay and our next one of those will be at Birmingham Pride in Nightingales on the Future Stage.

We are also working on some events that will run during the day and outside of club spaces so our fans and friends under 18 will be able to enjoy queer performance art and community based events. Plans include film viewings, drag makeup workshops, drag queen life drawing, open mic performance segments and more!”

For more on the Dragpunk Collective, visit www.facebook.com/dragpunkcollective

For more from The Nightingale Club, including full event listings and online ticket sales, visit www.nightingaleclub.co.uk