One of the first queens in the Drag Race UK werkroom, Divina De Campo has since been eating up the West End in shows like Chicago and Hedwig And The Angry Inch. Chris Williams dives into conversation with the performer ahead her turn as the villain of the SpongeBob SquarePants musical.
Who lives in a pineapple under the sea? The answer is SpongeBob SquarePants, but for now, so does drag queen Divina de Campo. This stage musical adaption of the Nickelodeon cartoon finds the Drag Race UK star playing the villainous Sheldon J. Plankton – an evil genius who, according to de Campo, “wants to spirit everybody away … hypnotise them into living on his ‘chum burgers’, which currently everybody hates because they’re awful”. This is followed by her iconic laugh, which peppers this interview.
As well as a Bowie number, Divina de Campo also inexplicably raps in the SpongeBob musical. “That’s my solo. It explains a bit of Plankton’s backstory, because he’s one of hundreds of other pieces of plankton. He wants people to like him, but he doesn’t really understand how to make that happen. So he’s horrible to people and some attention is better than no attention.”
Known largely as a drag performer, de Campo says she was asked to audition for the role and jumped at the chance: “The fact that somebody was willing to take a chance on me playing this masculine character…” she says, hailing it as her “drag king era” (followed by that laugh again). The SpongeBob musical, she adds, is akin to drag because it’s larger than life, pushing the limits of believability.
“That’s what drag does as well. It kind of extrapolates characteristics and highlights them.” While the costumes are interpreted more realistically, a full-on SpongeBob cartoon look was trailed – and scrapped. “Imagine somebody in a great big square yellow costume with that face – terrifying!”
I also wonder if de Campo, a non-binary performer, thinks the industry is making progress where inclusivity is concerned, with shows like Six including a non-binary cast member as Ann Of Cleves. While she agrees things are heading in the right direction, we still have a way to go. One in five people have a disability, she notes for instance – but that isn’t represented in the theatre. We need to have these conversations in the arts now – “otherwise we might as well stick on a video of Laurence Olivier in Othello” (a role infamous for blackface).
Similarly, having a drag performer like de Campo in a show like SpongeBob goes to show that drag is not ‘dangerous’, despite the backlash it’s been getting lately. “Are you going to take your child to see Frankie Boyle? No,” she reasons, noting that when she has done Drag Queen Story Hours in the past, she doesn’t sing grown-up songs – and that the backlash isn’t really about drag at all, but stems from something more insidious.
The SpongeBob Musical, Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff Bay, Tue 6-Sat 10 June.
Tickets: £15-£35. Info: here
words CHRIS WILLIAMS
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