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The annual buzz at The Stars Come Out in the State Theatre is a bit like, on a different scale, the buzz in a crowded school hall at an end-of-year concert. Everyone seems to know each other; there is enormous, uncritical enthusiasm for even the tackiest acts, and warm laughter and applause for every glitch.
The Stars Come Out has always been a celebration of a community created out of diversity - like cells of a fragmented revolutionary underground that have emerged separately on to the surface, found each other, and started to work together.
This year the tone was what one might call staid camp. It was a nostalgic show, relishing the traditions of decades of coded performance, transgressions and appropriations: redirected torch songs, traditional drag, elaborate song-and-dance routines, and a boy band that has done away with the girls on the sidelines.
What The Stars Come Out also has - that no school concert has - is real stars who are fabulous. This one had Philip Quast, Judi Connelli, Nancye Hayes, Genevieve Lemon, Deborah Cheetham and Paul Capsis, among others. Tina C, a (drag) country-and-western star from the US, compered the first half superbly. Her moving rendition of her latest single, 'Break My Heart But Don't Mess My Hair', was a highlight of the evening.
© The Australian
