Many years ago, I made the monumental decision to assist humanity by ensuring my genes were taken firmly out of the pool. No sprogs for this bloke. However, lots of people do feel the urge to procreate and produce and thanks to modern fertility technology you don’t need to do things the traditional way. Whoever you are if you want an ankle-biter in your life, there is an option out there. And babies, or the desire to have one, are a major part of Grace Carroll’s new one-act play Drag Baby, part of the springboard series at the King’s Head Theatre.
In a backstreet club Dan (Fraser Fraser) is in drag and ready to wow the audience. Drag is Dan’s life and he’s been doing it for a long time. But he’s not a happy queen. As he tells his friend and mentee, 19-year-old Nathan (Ché Francis), Dan wants to make it big on the television. And it could be about to happen as he is currently going through the preliminary stages for a drag reality tv show. Maybe this will be his way out of the clubs. Then a spanner is thrown in the works by the arrival of Sally (Nicole Evans), his estranged friend and, as he confesses to a horrified Nathan, Dan’s only ever girlfriend. Sally has arrived not only to rekindle their friendship but also to ask a favour of Dan. It’s nothing special really. She would just like him to make a non-monetary donation so that she and her girlfriend Sandra (Amelia Parillon) can have a baby. On the night the tv producers are in the audience, Dan has to grapple not only with what to wear but whether he is willing to help out Sally and, if he does, what the repercussions of that will be.
On the King’s Head website, Drag Baby is described as “a work in progress play that combines drag and new writing.” Well, going by the performance I saw, this is not a work in progress but is a fully formed, beautifully crafted story brought to the stage by an incredibly talented cast. The story really makes you think, and I would imagine I was not the only gay man in the audience who went away wondering what they would do in Dan’s shoes. There is no easy answer and one of the things I really did love in the writing was that Grace Carroll doesn’t try to push anything and say, “this is the right way to behave.” As an audience member, you can make up your own mind on who, if anyone, is a hero or villain. The characters are all very well drawn and the scenario they find themselves in is totally believable. Having lived with a drag queen, the scene in the dressing room where Dan decided at the last minute to change his outfit and was charging around trying to find something to wear really resonated with me.
This brings me to the cast. I’ve no idea if Fraser or Francis have done drag before but under the sequined wings of Drag Consultant Rudy Jeevanjee, they were both excellent. Dan a traditional queen and Nathan more avant-garde in their performance – I’m guessing I should credit Movement Director Olivia Stone at this point. Both actors really inhabited their roles – though I think Dan should have had a bit more top half stuffing when performing as Dolly Parton – and Fraser in particular made Dan a much more human and likeable character than I expected of a character described as a misanthropic drag queen in his mid-thirties. Evans and Parillon as Sally and Sandra respectively worked perfectly, and I could see them as a couple. In my mind, Sally needed someone like Sandra in her life to give her the grounding, stability and support she desperately needed, and in the brief time we saw her, I think Sandra would have got a whimsical, fun side that would add another dimension to her cold logic from Sally. I have to admit that in the end, I was really wishing the two of them well.
For a short – roughly one hour – one-act play, it was obvious that a lot of thought had gone into the design and Lu Herbert’s set and costumes were spot on, though the dressing room could easily have been a bit messier. My one minor gripe was that I would have turned the dressing room mirror lights off during the parts of the show which were set in the ‘club’ performance area. Joseph Winer’s direction was excellent, using every entry and exit point from the stage to great effect and, particularly in the drunk scene, making sure the action was kept realistic without going over the top.
All told, Drag Baby is a truly impressive play. I loved the story, the production and most especially the acting which really was excellent. For one hour, I forgot everything and found myself inhabiting a world of drag queens, lesbians, and some of the biggest questions in the universe and I loved it. I have to say that if this is a work in progress then I can’t wait to see the final thing, because I’m honestly not that sure what could be done to improve it.
Review by Terry Eastham
Dan, a misanthropic drag queen in his mid-thirties, only has one thing on his mind – to get on tv and become famous. That is until Sally, his estranged friend and only ever girlfriend, reappears and asks him to donate sperm so she and her girlfriend Sandra can have a baby. The pair rekindle the close friendship they once had, causing a strain in his relationship with his drag mentee and friend Nathan, as these four characters contemplate their own relationship with parenthood.
Production Team Cast
Writer: Grace Carroll (she/her)
Director: Joseph Winer (he/him)
Producer: Lydia Harrison (she/her)
Movement Director: Olivia Stone (she/her)
Drag Consultant: Rudy Jeevanjee (he/they)
Designer (Set & Costume): Lu Herbert (they/them)
Cast
Dan: Fraser Fraser (he/him)
Sally: Nicole Evans (she/her)
Nathan: Ché Francis (they/them)
Sandra: Amelia Parillon (she/they)
Listing Information
17th – 18th April 2022, 19:00
Kings Head Theatre, 115, Upper Street, N1 1QN.
https://kingsheadtheatre.com/
Running time: 60 minutes
Ages: 16+
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