Sound of the Underground: a bit of a mess, but not a drag
I’m guessing that at no point in its history has a Royal Court production listed cast members known as Lilly Snatchdragon, Sue Gives a F--- and Wet Mess. That these variously queer, non-binary and trans performers, drag artists by trade, are on stage at all at the Court is part of the point of Travis Alabanza’s new show (let’s not call it a play), which rests on a somewhat confected provocation: the takeover of an establishment space by underground artists who do so much to influence mainstream culture while simultaneously being marginalised and commodified by it.
Hmm. Those who suspect the Court is growing ever further from its own roots will likely not have their fears assuaged by this premise. Sound of the Underground begins with an excruciatingly clumsy send-up of the sort of bourgeois kitchen-sink drama the Court is supposedly known for (although, to be honest, those days feel very far away). There’s a vague flirtation with an actual plot, involving a larky assassination attempt on US drag superstar RuPaul, and then a long sequence involving lip-synched pre-recorded interviews with the cast itself on the ruinous corroding of the underground scene at the hands of Drag Race UK and urban gentrification.
By the second act, the production has knowingly abandoned its flimsy pretence and revealed itself to be what it was all along: a joyous celebration of drag performance, compered with manicured disdain by Sue Gives a F---, who has a particularly fine-tuned contempt for the Prosecco-heavy hen parties – aka “huns” – that tend to make up her audiences.
Co-created by Debbie Hannan, Sound of the Underground certainly considers itself a polemic, in particular on the lack of money in club drag, a point undermined by the fact several cast members have taken a pay cut to participate (we are told several times their Royal Court salary is a paltry £600 a week). Early on, the audience is ambushed with buckets (containing laminated QR codes for phone donations), which feels less like a meaningful protest than a coercive presumption.
The show’s inevitable trigger warnings don’t include one for RuPaul, who may be discomforted to learn that a stuffed effigy purporting to symbolise him is ripped apart on stage. Arguments, though, are not this show’s strong point. Where once the Court might have put on a decent play scrutinising the economics of drag and the audience gaze, it now settles for blithely virtue-signalling its way through these issues instead.
Yet this show’s wayward, high-wire energy had me hooked. As befits drag itself, its much better at distilling its ideas through actual performance. Each cast member is superb at what they do, although most discomforting is Chiyo, a trans man whose routine embodies the complexity of his post-op body as an object of personal liberation, voyeuristic fascination and means of employment. I loved Midgett Bardot, and Ms Sharon le Grande too. A mess, then, but not necessarily a drag.
Until Feb 25. Tickets: 020 7565 5000; royalcourttheatre.com
