DragSpeare | Jo Loth & Anne Pensalfini
Images: Joel Devereux
The stallion squad lit up the Metro Arts stage for the new season of DragSpeare and showed that drag kings can be more than hip thrusts and strip teases (while still having a lot of hip thrusts and strip teases).
After lamenting that their show had gone stale after its millionth run in their Queensland RSL tour, Pan Tastical, Rocky V Liqour, Swingin’ Dick, Biron Bothways, and York Lit decided to inject some 'serious art' into their work and give some of Shakespeare's most recognisable scenes a crack.
The squad launches into the scenes cut with popular songs like 'Somebody That I Used to Know' for the Nunnery scene in Hamlet, and 'She's So High' for the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliette. One of my personal favourites was Swinging Dicks jazz rendition of 'Eye Of The Tiger' that he delivered as Hamlet stepping over the body of his dead wife.
The vocal performances were so impressive and each cast member had a chance to show off in different numbers.
As well as the Shakespeare, I think the cast delivered exactly what I have come to love from Drag Kings which is excellent physical comedy, witty humour and over the top performances.
This show challenges your expectations from the very beginning. It was set in a theatre pretending to be an RSL pretending to be the theatre again. The cast plays men, playing women. There were enemies playing lovers and lovers playing enemies and frames within frames within frames.
This very Shakespearean jumble culminated in a brawl/sex scene (?) that had me absolutely cackling. The stallion squad had been building this tension between their drag characters and it all came together in this raucous scene that ignited the audience in laughter. It also gave me that little bit of narrative satisfaction I needed to feel like I understood this complicated story they were weaving.
In the last few scenes of the show I lost the plot a little bit and at times wasn't sure who was supposed to be speaking, the Shakespeare characters or the drag kings. After such an exciting climax scene I felt a little bit lost when we swooped back into very serious Shakespeare, maybe partly because my background knowledge of these plays is basically zero.
The show ended on another high note as the stallion squad returned to their bread and butter by singing popular songs and thrusting in sync.
DragSpeare is going to challenge you and give exactly what you need all in one big ball of smouldering pouts, puns, gender fuckery and song. Go and see it before it wraps up on the 28th of June.
DragSpeare plays at Metro Arts, West End from 18-28 June 2025.
