The Ding Dong Girls: everything is better in a cocksucking dress
07 Jul 2018

by Drew Rowsome -

Powerful, edgy, with a soupcon of skank

Drag den mother Marni MacDonald bestows that effusive praise upon her current - they are ever-shifting - favourite, but it could easily apply to The Ding Dong Girls as a whole. Giddy and silly with eye-popping costumes and performances, The Ding Dong Girls is a delightful concoction. The only complaint about this musical saga of the travails and triumphs of the conception and birth of a drag troupe, is that it has been hemmed in by the time constraints of a Fringe Festival slot.

The program notes that this production is "an abridged version of a longer, two-act musical." That I cannot wait to see. Book authors Christopher Richards and Gordon Bowness deliver The Boys in the Band-esque bitchy banter in a Cabaret-ish structure, with musical numbers commenting or contrasting with the misadventures of the madcap queens. There are serious issues at play and this truncated version unfortunately doesn't have time to let them percolate and ripen but, when there is so much glamour, action and gay abandon on stage, subtlety and solid structure be damned.

An intriguing debate about whether drag should be performance art, political or just entertainment adds thematic depth, and with a running time of under an hour (feels like minutes), that is enough to add satisfactory heft to a quick rising souffle. The musical numbers by Lisa Lambert are serviceably catchy and lyrically witty. From the moment the statuesque and vocally powerful (with a soupcon of skank) Graham Conway (Peter Pan) launches into the familiar melody, "Somewhere over the . . ." and subverts it with ". . . top," the audience knows it is in dexterous and skillful hands.

Conway explodes across the stage, long gamine legs and eyes that flash double entendres if not triples. He is imperious, overbearing and prone to insecure giggles. In true drag style, there should not be any room left on stage, or off, for the supporting cast. Except that all of them assume the others are the supporting cast. Nic Mencia builds slowly from recalcitrant to revolutionary, and his/her number in defense of drag as art instead of entertainment, life instead of death, is a stunner. Joel Schaefer takes a cliché blossoming ingenue routine and belts it through the back of the theatre, somehow making smug innocently endearing.

Oscar Moreno (Thank You For Being a Friend, Altar Boyz , Shadowlands) doesn't get a solo number, but he doesn't need one. Strutting, stretching, flouncing and repeatedly stripping to skimpy skimpies, Moreno makes sure the spotlight, and the audience's riveted attention, never leaves Mindy Melons. Moreno is such an extraordinary physical specimen that one only recollects his quick way with a quip, or the physical exaggeration of a gesture to drive the drag speak deeper, in hindsight. Gawking can override critical faculties.

Comic relief comes in the form of Miss Fiercalicious who dances with abandon and confidence but limited virtuousity. That is the sweetest sugar in The Ding Dong Girls: it was opening night and there were the inevitable wardrobe malfunctions, lighting miscues and timing glitches. All in a night's work for an amateur drag troupe. Or not. The text has a built-in narrator, the beatific Mama Dominatrix who gives a master class in drag style and grace. Any potential mishap is neutered with a quip or an eyebrow cocked to kill. The rest of the cast has absorbed that well-honed skill - Mama Dominatrix was the very first Miss Woody's though she seems freakishly well-preserved to have earned that honour - and doesn't hesitate to apply it.

The Ding Dong Girls is partially based on Mama Dominatrix's experiences in a drag troupe in the early '90s, a vocation she shared with Richards who also created the kitschy-couture costumes. While The Ding Dong Girls is far from a history lesson, it does evoke a nostalgia, a memory mood, placing the audience at the heart of the magic that drag can create. And the political potential it has. Mama Dominatrix's smile as she watches and, without leaving her throne, weaves in and out of the action, and she effortlessly drags the audience into her reverie. 

And her smile is a skank-eating grin when the entire audience can't resist singing along with, "Everything is better in a cocksucking dress."