Melbourne Fringe's gender benders, suspenders and upenders
MELBOURNE FRINGE FESTIVAL
FAUX FRINGE FEST ★★★
Faux Army, Vau d’vile, Fitzroy, until September 24
LASHES ★★★½
Butterfly Club, CBD, until Sept 23
If drag has become a bit mainstream – and all the pop-culture love, from Priscilla, Queen of the Desert to RuPaul’s Drag Race, suggests it might have – the Fringe Festival offers a chance to walk on the wild side when it comes to performing gender. One new vein being mined is drag performed by women, and Faux Fringe Fest provides a fascinating glimpse.
Pocket rocket Bae L'amour leads the Faux Army in a subversive and joyous drag-show-with-the-lot, featuring a cast of gender benders, suspenders and upenders – from drag queens and kings to bearded ladies and those somewhere in the androgynous middle.
Some numbers are rather traditional – striking a pose to Madonna’s Vogue, say – and they’re there to be appreciated for the technique. There’s a cross-gendered striptease to I’m Too Sexy, and a hilarious lampoon of Hispanic machismo in which a moustachioed sleazebag pursues a blonde with her breasts gaffer-taped to her chest.
Perhaps the show's most transgressive element is the performance of femininity, which reimagines everything from commando uniforms to how camp is deployed in a drag show.
Faux Fringe Fest could use more audience interaction and improvised wit, but it has opened a creative space to watch.
Another envelope-pushing act is the ultra-femme queer cabaret duo behind Lashes, Lulu Venom and Suckabelle. This isn’t for the prudish – one scene is reminiscent of 1970s German sex theatre – and it certainly isn’t for anyone with fixed ideas of a woman.
From the soft, insistent welcoming of a hostess as you walk in, there’s an unsettling edge to the embodiment of gender here. The artists tag-team through a strange odyssey – an eccentric variety celebration of the feminine, but one that doesn’t shy from its contradictions. One moment a performer is twerking to Britney Spears, the next she’s devouring a live heart with the frenzy of the maenads.
Perhaps its one misstep is the singing, for which the performers have no aptitude. The performance art, however, is fierce, erotic and imaginative, and guaranteed to surprise.
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