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Panto dames and Michael Ball in Hairspray may make cross-dressing on stage seem common, but it takes more than a frock to be a successful drag queen. As a new revival of La Cage aux Folles and the upcoming transfer of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, celebrate the art of drag, Roger Foss looks at the men behind the mascara.
Few drag queens have made the transition from gay pubs to family audiences as spectacularly as Lily Savage. While Lily's drag queen contemporaries, such as Dockyard Doris, Regina Fong, Phil Starr and Nikki Young, attracted loyal fans (and have all incidentally gone to that peroxide drag queen paradise in the sky), Lily (aka Paul O'Grady) outgrew her gay audience and became a national treasure.
Similarly, dazzling Danny La Rue pulled drag into the mainstream, progressing from post war all-male revues with titles such as Soldiers in Skirts to phenomenal success in almost every aspect of show business, including a film (Our Miss Fred) and six West end shows, even starring as dolly Levi in the Jerry Herman musical Hello Dolly at the Prince of Wales Theatre.
American Judy Garland impersonator Jim Bailey is still a Las Vegas fixture and has played the London Palladium. Dame Edna Everage (aka Barry Humphries) continues to enjoy television success and has starred in West End stage shows including Housewife, Superstar and A Night with Dame Edna (her Broadway show Dame Edna;: The Royal Tour received a Tony Award for Live Theatrical Event). Drag queen Divine (aka Glen Milstead) went from New York's underground and Off-Broadway scene to star in John Waters movies, including creating the original Edna Turnblad in Hairspray, and was also moving into mainstream acting just before he died in 1988.
But the Saint Tropez drag club setting for the New Menier Chocolate Factory production of the Jerry Herman-Harvey Feinstein musical La Cage aux Folles goes back to drag basics. When middle-aged drag queen Albin (played by Douglas Hodge) dabs on a little more mascara while singing about feeling special in feathers and bugle beads, he emerges as 'ZaZa' to perform in a far less extravagant club than in the original 1978 film's Las Vegas-style night spot, of in the original Broadway and London productions of the musical. If this La Cage is more like crock 'n' roll joints such as Blackpool's Funny Girls showbar, or the network of gay clubs where today's drag queen boom is led by clowns in gowns such as Titti La Camp, Lola Lasagne, Kandi Kane and Dave Lynn, then Herman says he's "so thrilled".
"That's exactly what Harvey and I always wanted to do with the show - set it in a smaller, grittier drag club. It's always been so vast that the Ziegfeld Follies could have performed there. We were once watching La Cage and all that white chiffon and damask and I whispered to Harvey, "Gave you ever been to a drag club in Saint Tropez?" He whispered back, "No, but I'm sure it's not like this."
Relocated to the outskirts of Saint Tropez, Terry Johnson's production probably owes more to the outskirts world of Lily savage performing on the bar at the Vauxhall Tavern in Camberwell, and may well be recognisable to glitzy Sydney drag queens Mitzi, Felicia and Bernadette in The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (the stage musical version, already a hit in Australia, is due to open in London in late 2008), or even edgy New York dragsters Noxeema, Vida an Chi-Chi in the 1995 Hollywood movie To Waong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar.
The man responsible for creating ZaZa's new drag queen "look" at the Menier, is wit and make-up maestro Richard Mawbey, who has worked for may years with La Rue, Bailey and Dame Edna and, most recently, masterminded Michael Ball's Edna Turnblad transformation in Hairspray at he Shaftesbury Theatre. Mawbey also collaborated with legendary American hair and make-up designer Ted Azar in the original London production of La Cage, starring Broadway's George Hearn as Albin.
"Unlike the vast London Palladium stage, we're working in a small space at the Menier, so I have to be careful that make-um doesn't look too terrifying in close-up. After visiting drag clubs himself, Douglas (Hodge) felt that, like so many drag queens, Albin's stage persona would be influenced by iconic female performers such as Marilyn Monroe or Tina Turner. So we've gone in that direction. "I Am what I Am' then becomes Albin's Judy Garland moment."
As for Albin's farcical attempt to disguise himself as "mother" when his lover's son brings home his fiancée's ultra-conservative parents to meet them, "that's always been done in a rather cod drag way," says Mawbey. "This time it's Albin trying to look as wonderful as he possibly can. I thought, why not give him a Catherine Deneuve image? It's just what a French drag queen in a little club on the edge of Saint Tropez might have thought of as glamour personified."
Apart from girdling his rear into a frock, one of the biggest challenges facing Hodge, Mawbey reminds me, is the 'A Little More Mascara' scene, where Albin sits in front of a mirror and transforms himself from unhappy man to glamour queen ("'Cause when I feel glamorous, elegant, beautiful, the world that I'm looking at's beautiful too"). "It needs lots of planning. Douglas is singing as well, so I have to train him to carefully time the mascara to the music. Danny La Rue found it difficult when he once played Albin in Jersey, and this was someone who's entire life had involved making up as a women. I'd literally be standing in the wings screaming, 'Dan, get that wig on quick'!'
