REVIEW: LIFE’S A DRAG at Brockley Jack Studio Theatre 15 - 19 Nov 2022

‘The jokes fly thick and fast, and an hour whizzes by … very funny, very fabulous’ ★★★★

Maxine’s flat is full of glamorous stuff, a riot of faux-fur and platinum blonde fright-wigs and frocks in colours that don’t so much pop as explode, for Maxine is in a relationship with a Drag Diva. Maxine in the day-to-day is not glamorous. She describes herself as a short fat lesbian, which is not true, lesbian label aside, but her choice of street clothing is distressed jeans and baggy tee-shirts.

When her friend is injured in a homophobic attack, Maxine steps up, comes out to her mum, and nails her friend’s lip-syncing gig at a drag club. She rocks the wig, she hides her ordinariness under white face-paint and eye-liner, and owns the stage in a way she doesn’t own much else.

Nancy Brabin-Platt plays Maxine with a missionary zeal to reclaim drag acts for women. She developed the act in response to a famous drag entertainer proclaiming: “Drag loses its sense of danger and its sense of irony once it’s men not doing it…”. She reclaims it as a celebration of the marginalised, of trans-queens, of gender non-conformity.

It carries that message, together with sensitive exploration of finding an identity when the world, and mothers, want to put her in a box, and being very well observed. Lois Brabin-Platt directs with a light touch, the jokes fly thick and fast, and an hour whizzes by. Very funny, very fabulous.  

Life’s A Drag

by Nancy Brabin Platt

15th –19th November at 7.30pm 2022

@LoisBrabinPlatt

https://instagram.com/nancy_brabin_platt

Reviewer:

Chris Lilly read Drama at Hull University in the 70s, stage-managed a bit, spent 8 years as a community arts worker in Tower Hamlets, did the occasional tech job, then taught in East London and participated in shedloads of community theatre. Since retiring from teaching, he has acquired an MA in Theatre from the University of Surrey and indulged a passion for live performance anywhere in London courtesy of his Freedom Pass.