While there’s RuPaul and Michelle Visage, Alaska and Willam, Violet Chachki and Gottmik, drag duos don’t get much bigger than Trixie and Katya. RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 7 and All Stars alums, the pair (who also happen to share the same first name out of drag), have collaborated for music, books, a podcast, and at least two regular YouTube series – one for Drag Race producers WOW Presents, the other for Netflix – and even a short lived TV show on Viceland based on the former webseries. Now, inevitably, here they are together for Trixie & Katya Live, the European leg of which stopped off in the Cardiff International Arena last Wednesday.

Trixie Mattel, the country music make-up mogul, and Katya Zamolodchikova, the “Russian bisexual transexual” and self-professed “sweatiest woman in showbusiness”, are your classic odd couple: their screwball, surrealist sense of humour and ability to verbally rip each other to shreds with the affection of two longtime BFFs creates unbeatable chemistry. However, it could be argued they work best at short, YouTube-friendly lengths, and this live show, at times, goes some way to prove it. The opening skit, filmed and projected onto the stage curtain, involves the two of them busting out of their WOW Presents green-screen studio thanks to an ‘opportuntity’ to do a live show, offered by their manager Sandy (played by Kelly “don’t wear bacon” Mantle doing a light Natasha Lyonne impression in a wardrobe of Hilary Clinton power suits and a permanent neck brace). 

The condition is that the show is sponsored by fictional payment plan tycoon Klarma – based on the real-life company fans complained their webseries became too deferential to. Klarma wants Trixie and Katya to go a bit more upmarket than their usual lowbrow chaos. So, we get Shakespeare recitals, broadway numbers, lip syncs to a mix of pop songs and original material and, most wonderfully baffling of all, ribbon-twirling to Cyndi Lauper.

The literal highpoint of this variety show-esque programme is a limp Katya – comatosed by a Caitlyn Jenner meditation-cum-hypnosis app, naturally – being walked through a dance number by a squad of male dancers, Weekend At Bernie’s style, culminating in the most morbid aerial climax you’ll ever see. The show must go on, even if the performer isn’t conscious for it, and Klarma isn’t shy about their intent to harm their main stars if they don’t comply.

The problem is this is the closer of the first act and Trixie & Katya Live never quite tops it in the second. Mistakes like them fudging a few lines and goading each other into breaking with adlibs only add to the audience’s enjoyment – no one is here expecting perfection, and the constant fourth-wall breaks remind you none of this is anywhere close to serious the-a-tre. But some moments where costume changes are happening backstage smack a little too much filler, despite Mantle trying to distract you from that when she’s alone on stage. For the most part, the video inserts are much better uses of that time, especially two hilarious back-to-back ads: one parodying Nicole Kidman’s now-iconic AMC plug and another – a much deeper cut -, Lauran Bacall’s instant coffee TV spots from the 1970s and 80s.

To be honest, this is almost a show beyond criticism. By that, I mean Trixie and Katya are so warmly embraced by everyone here this evening – even in the sterility of an arena, as opposed to the intimacy of a cabaret club – there’s little they could do to turn anybody off (even with Katya’s repeated threats/promises to piss on everyone). Still, the length, ambition and variety here is not two megastars of the drag world resting on their laurels; instead, a successful partnership at the top of its game, with still far greater heights to achieve.  

Trixie & Katya, Cardiff International Arena, Wed 30 Nov

words HANNAH COLLINS