“It’s an interesting premise, and a great format in theory.”
There have been plenty of meditations on the problems with social media and influencers. And there have been plenty of stories told about the ugly truth behind fame. Fame Whore has as stab at both. And though we’ve seen these ideas many times before, there’s a complexity and messiness to this one which sticks with me on my journey home, and which ultimately makes it worth a watch.
Becky Biro is a hard-working drag artist, showcasing her sass and silly song-writing across the city. But she finds herself caught between wanting to do the right thing and promote the rights of the underrepresented, and being completely and utterly selfish, taking what she feels she deserves without consequence.
Having been rejected from Drag Factor year after year, she decides the only way she’ll be accepted is by gaining an undeniably massive and committed social media following. But how to go about it?
The show is split in to two main chunks: ‘1. Becky Biro is a good person and all of this just happened to her’, and ‘2. Becky is a total bitch, and this is what she really did’. It’s a great way to split up the narrative: first we get to know Becky, we’re on her side. Then we get down to the gritty truth.
This is the kind of drag I love, on a shoe-string budget, but with plenty of extra touches to keep our campy spirits up. A brilliant nod to Drag-Race star Sasha Velour’s shaking out her wig to reveal raining petals is a particular highlight.
Alys Whitehead’s design- a mirrored floor, a colour-changing ring light, and a glittery blue curtain- set the scene, but ultimately, Gigi Zahir is the show. Zahir, aka Crayola the Queen, is magnetic as fame-hungry Becky. Touting shallow nonsense- “Beckly Biro is delicious and good tasting but also nutritious. It’s not just donuts for dinner!”- so fluently, it’s as though the person behind the drag has been completely lost under that enormous blue wig. But Zahir is also a dab hand at dropping the façade abruptly, if only for a moment, so that we see the honest, whimpering desperation.
It’s an interesting premise, and a great format in theory. The trouble is, it’s a half hour too long, and ends up being a bit of a drag. Whilst Zahir is fabulous, and writer Tom Ratcliffe has moments of charming vitriol, the story just isn’t really meaty enough for 90 minutes straight through.
“There’s enough that’s excellent to know that she could make this genuinely spine-chilling”
Writer Nina Atesh has come upon a beautiful, terrifying idea: What if the sea simply disappeared one day, drying out like a small puddle, stranding all its aquatic societies, fish and sailor alike. It captures the imagination with both the arid aesthetic of the dried-out sea, and the practical horror of being completely stranded in the middle of nowhere with no fresh water to be found. Unfortunately, it doesn’t quite come to fruition.
There’s definitely a growing sense of dread throughout, but it seems misdirected: The two last crew members on board this particular ship- the captain (Andrew Callaghan) and his loyal steward, Garson (Jack Flammiger) – busy themselves with pointless naval tasks, playing out some sense of normality, until they’re interrupted by a mysterious stranger (Caleb O’Brien), claiming to be a stranded whaler, in need only of food and water. But his motives become suspect as he tries to manipulate and turn the captain and steward against one another. The reason isn’t entirely clear- he seems to desperately want the captain’s much prized jar of sea water- but the menace he poses doesn’t seem to add up to the apparent goal.
Julia Sullivan’s set is appropriately sparse, a platform serving as Captain’s desk, topped with only a ledger, a lamp, and the precious sea water. Sullivan’s costumes have a little more flare, mirroring the bizarre contrast between the bleak, lonely circumstances, and the captain’s refusal to give up his naval rituals: Garson is smartly attired in a striped blue collarless shirt, always tucked in, and similarly the captain is never without his naval jacket, scattered with what looks like glittering, gold seaweed, a sign of his eternal pledge to life at sea.
The performances are strong on the whole, though the script seems to let O’Brien down a bit; the uncertainty of his character’s purpose seeps into his performance. Callaghan is jarringly spectacular, a massive fish in a small pond (pun intended). His eyes bulge with exhaustion, and his false jocularity is maybe the scariest part of the show.
If Atesh were to rewrite this and come back to the stage with the exact same cast and crew, I would absolutely come to see it. There’s enough that’s excellent to know that she could make this genuinely spine-chilling if she were willing to kill her darlings and rework the plot.
