Christmas is already a pretty camp holiday, but if it’s not camp enough there’s always drag queens. Five drag queens and Michelle Visage (as well as four gorgeous male backup dancers) stopped at Cardiff’s Tramshed as part of the official Christmas Queens Live tour – Christmas Queens 2 being the second volume of the seasonal CD featuring RuPaul’s Drag Race queens.
The show is a Christmas present to Welsh Drag Race fans, given in return for the huge reception they gave Battle of the Seasons when it came to the Tramshed last March.
With Drag Race All Stars season 2recently airing a few months ago – and four out of the five queens appearing on that season – Christmas Queens also serves as an unofficial All Stars tour. Along with reigning All Stars queen Alaska were fan favourite Katya, Phi Phi O’Hara, Ginger Minj (filling in for Detox) and Drag Race season 3 runner up Manila Luzon. Michelle Visage was again on hand as Emcee, although apart from hosting a mini onstage game-show and starting the night with a speech on acceptance there wasn’t much hosting to be done. Visage later sang O Holy Night, which after many comedy Christmas song was a sweet and traditional change of pace.
While pseudo-game-show ‘Wheel of Mariah’, where two queens along with two audience members lip-sync Mariah Carey’s All I Want for Christmas, serving as an interlude; the rest of the night was straightforward song performances, with video of the queens talking about Christmas memories in between songs.
Season 7 runner-up and All Star Ginger Minj sang two high energy dance numbers, Christma-Hannu-Kwanzaa-Ka and Down Home Country Christmas; not being a fan of this particular queen from the show I was pleasantly surprised that I enjoyed these performances. While some queens’ songs were straightforward Christmas pop songs, such as Phi Phi O’Hara’s Naughty or Nice, others were pure comedy songs – popular queen Katya’s take on the 12 Days of Christmas finds her receiving “2 Bob Ross Paintings and 10 pounds of ravioli”, among other things. Alaska’s Chr!$Tm@$ $Ux [sic] is a gender-nonconformist’s A Christmas Carol, that goes from singing “Christmas sucks” to “Christmas rocks”… and for some reason she ends the song by decapitating a Donald Trump doll – proof that drag is satirical.
There are minimum props but there are plenty of Christmas outfits, backing dancers and a video background. Although you get the feeling that some of the fans would be happy for the queens to just stand on stage while they cheer and clap; it shows how big a fan-base these drag queens have when some queens come on the video, and get some of the queens who aren’t even appearing live (Jinkx Monsoon and Miss Fame for example) get some of the loudest cheers.
Finishing with everyone singing We Wish You A Merry Christmas and Auld Lang Syne, Christmas Queens a hugely entertaining way to add more camp to your Christmas.
words & photos CHRIS WILLIAMS