Above and featured (l to r): Skank Sinatra and Dolly Diamond.
This madcap romp of a show featured the chalk and cheese drag queens visiting us from Melbourne – Skank Sinatra and Dolly Diamond. It had everything but Yule Brenner. jammed into it, but memorably some successful, quick costume changes, superb comic timing, actual singing, lip-syncing with priceless movement and melodramatic facial contortions, rivalry, banter and accessible funny moments.
This show with a plot tracing something about show queens owing tax bills to the Edinburgh Fringe and needing show failure insurance to pay up sees the stars challenge each other to do the worst spot segments possible. The slapstick, hectic pace of all that and the huge differences in style and background that provided a fast and fun feel and some numbers as solo drag artists or combined that do anything but fail.
In real life and in the show-within the show, the pair slayed and fumbled their way through predicament before a hugely responsive full house. The sardonic, colourful piece would work on many intimate stages, in any community that needs a good laugh, to hear Aussie drag artists sing and provide an entertainment to titillate anyone watching (that really means anywhere currently).
The Performers’ run between the Mardi Gras Fair Day and after-partyless Parade week eve has what 2026 needs to lighten our load. It certainly is an enduring, tour-able piece, with a pairing of interstate queens that works in blending style, timbres and visual effect thoroughly and confrontationally before us.
Jumping out at us, intending totally to scare, The Performers brings loads of quality, accessible humour, crotch-fanning crassness plus a fine mix of sung and spoken star-quality silliness.
Skank Sinatra returns to Qtopia (after a fabulous Frank-lyric twisting Pride Festival appearance) with more cosmopolitan treatment of a unique Danish cum South African heritage. This slick and immaculately groomed crooner did anything but fail onstage. It was a treat to see Skank’s nouveau Broadway bimbo-with-a-bite fare joined by Dolly Diamond’s left-0f-centre caricature sandpaper realism. This line-up’s roller coaster of friendly-fire applause-hungry banter and bitchiness and a dab of classic cutting audience participation (from Dolly) really worked.
Highlights of this spiky duo’s eclectic, inimitable edginess in attempting to present numbers to fail were Dolly’s chiselled lip sync to a strange narrative from that other Dolly. Skank Sinatra’s gags (accents and all) once more which reflected on growing up Danish in South Africa before moving to the land of Kylie got lots of laughs from the crowd I joined. The statuesque, anguished rendition of Don’t Cry For Me Argentina in Danish with comic translation of the new lyrics made my night.
In this everything-old-is-newer-again show, drag meets a Down-Under SNL sarcasm, has spot shows of both real singing and lip syncing plus hints of BBC comedy. The Performers clutched at the pearly, histrionic hubris of Broadway divas and enterprising queens down on their Fringe festival luck a la fois.
In an age where Wicked film sequel superstars saturate our screens it is a pleasant twist to see unique local drag characterisations, wedged into a made up plot and finding numbers that really work and survive the re-working. These stars of stage, screen, charity events and TV endeared themselves to us For Good, Bad, or Ugly turns of events and the laughs were long and real.
C-words abounded. like :charisma, chemistry, comic timing as well as character consistency. Locally familiar gay gags and global ones made references to Grindr and garish non-drag or even straight dating life (Dolly’s portrait of a clueless, condomless teenage dad was exemplary here) all reared up their semi-damaged heads. This well-paced offering from the pair managed to demonstrate Only Fans underwear kink, match fashion faux pas and homely outfits his hig satinesque and ball gown excellence and even get a bit of Muriel’s Wedding-like ABBA in there.
Moments drawing on drag club tradition sitcom, TV serial and stage icons from the youthful, elegant and retro personas here combined for this show were a treat. A thoughtful party indeed continues wit regards to Qtopia’s continually well-curated Loading Dock Theatre and Substation programming. These venues are positioned half-way up the Mardi Gras golden mile and with one Arts curation foot planted in past customs or stories, but another with toe pointed towards a fabulous, progressive future.
