Surviving the pandemic XIII: Mrs Kasha Davis the Workhorse Queen, and Stage Mother werks

12 Feb 2021 - photos courtesy of publicist

The pandemic moved the Sundance and Slamdance film festivals online which is a sad sign of the times. But what it truly criminal is that Mrs Kasha Davis, star of the documentary Workhouse Queen which is premiering at Slamdance, won't get to walk a red carpet. The workhorse queen has earned her moment in the spotlight.

Workhorse Queen is a biographical documentary that hews closely to the celebrity bio-pic formula. We see the tragic back story, the determined rise, the devastating fall and then the rise back to redemption. Naturally, when it is the trajectory of a drag queen's career, it is infinitely more entertaining. And tragic. Mrs Kasha Davis put in her time in the trenches of the thriving Rochester, New York drag scene. She has an adorable husband (who knows how to arch his own eyebrow and state, "The hardest part of being a drag husband . . .") and a lovely suburban home which also provides much of the material for her comedy. Her persona is that of a housewife, albeit a glamorous one with big hair, whose catch phrase is "There's always time for a cocktail!"

The Rochester circuit is too small to contain the talent it has nurtured, and Davis auditions and auditions for a spot on RuPaul's Drag Race. On her seventh attempt, we see snippets of the many audition tapes, she succeeds and enters the cutthroat big time. The season does not go well, she is the fifth queen to be cut from the show. Fortunately, as a fan favourite, she is able to milk her status as a contestant on Drag Race to become a full time, world-travelling drag queen. Until there is a new crop, the gigs start to dry up and she turns to the bottle and her tagline "There's always time for a cocktail!" is no longer funny. The humiliations are many - a snub by Alaska Thunderfuck is brutal, one by Bianca Del Rio is (no surprise) even worse, and sleazy promoters (a drag specialty) rip her off - but Davis maintains her sunny disposition and works her way to a comeback. A comeback home in suburban Rochester where she has realized what is important in life.

Workhorse Queen (the moniker is applied to Davis by Isaac Mizrahi in a maliciously bitchy moment) raises lots of questions about the phenomenon of Drag Race. While it has effectively and cheerfully mainstreamed the art of drag, it is also a reality TV show competition and there are winners and losers. A spot on Drag Race, is now not only a ticket to instant fame or infamy (contrast Brooke Lynn Hytes in 2015 to Hytes after her Drag Race triumph, it has become a necessity if a queen is to create a financially viable career. One of Davis's fellow Rochester queens, Aggy Dune, continues to audition and melts down over his spectacular string of rejections (the franchise has sashayed its way to 14 seasons so far). Which is a shame as, until then, he (monologuing out of drag for the most part) has been a hilarious counter sub-plot. Workhorse Queen is also an exploration of ageism and classism. We get a hysterical tour of Dune's drag closet with a deadpan diva joke that slays, before he bemoans that now everything can be ordered online. It's not work, or art, anymore, "Click a button and everything's there. Just add vodka and she's a drag queen."

There is a wonderful, heart wrenching moment when, in her drag infancy, Davis realizes that she will never be a glamorous female impersonator so embraces becoming a comedic clown. Beauty is a construct, Davis never looks less than fabulous. Workhorse Queen is dedicated to a super fan who gives an impassioned interview that induces tears and we understand why Davis does what she does. Why she works so hard at a faltering career that has gone from international tours to drag brunches and televised children's story times. (Though Davis's one-woman show There's Always Time for a Cocktail and the one with her husband Life with the Davises are, judging from the snippets, must-sees.) Whether mid-level (hopefully rocketing up several levels when Workhorse Queen finds an audience) celebrity is enough, is left for the audience to decide. With this film, Davis is living the dream and, like a true diva (even a suburban one), she has earned a red carpet at Slamdance. 

Workhorse Queen premieres at Slamdance on Friday, February 12. slamdance.com
Another casualty of the pandemic is Stage Mother, a film that deserved a better fate. I received a screener way back in August, which in pandemic time is a lifetime. At that point Stage Mother was supposed to open in select theatres and drive-ins. Within hours, as lockdowns shuttered venues, that was reduced to one theatre in Halifax. And then it didn't open on a big screen at all and I heard nothing more. Until I found it while browsing Amazon Prime and discovered it is also available on DVD and Blu-ray. While not a cinematic masterpiece (as director Thom Fitzgerald's previous films The Hanging Garden, Beefcake, Cloudburst and 3 Needles emphatically are), Stage Mother is a slick, commercial mainstream film. Yes, again thanks to RuPaul, a film about plucky drag queens is a mainstream bid by an arthouse director. Mainstream enough to attract Adrian Grenier, Lucy Liu, Lenore Zann, and Jackie Beat to the cast.

The star of the film is Jacki Weaver who is incandescent in that Canadian way of channelling intense emotions into subtle but intense moments that build to a cathartic climax. In a quiet, gentle manner, she is more spectacular than the drag queens. That is the central problem with Stage Mother, it is brutally schematic, mashing the trope of the straight woman savior of the poor gays with the trope of "let's put on a show to save the bar." There is never any suspense over whether she will save the bar, heal her dead son's boyfriend's heart, conquer a queen's drug addiction, save the wardrobe girl from an abusive boyfriend, and reunite a queen with a disapproving parent, all while finding a new romance for herself. We're a long way from Outrageous! or even The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, where the same stakes were significantly higher and the queens held the spotlight firmly. 

Not that getting there is a drag, Stage Mother is a lot of fun. And any chance to see the wildly talented and hunky Oscar Moreno (The Ding Dong Girls, Thank You for Being a Friend, Altar Boyz) burn up the screen should be taken gratefully. And while I occasionally rolled my eyes as the plot followed a well-worn rut, by the end I was sobbing with joy. Tropes werk. And so does Stage Mother. Stage Mother streams on Amazon Prime