Gardenia at Sadler’s Wells, by Huntley Dent


Gardenia
Les ballets C de la B

Sadler's Wells
June 30, 2011

Gardenia-007
Gardenia at Sadler's Wells | Photograph: Tristram Kenton

Gaga ladies. Unless you are a devotee of drag icons from yesteryear, those who populate the stage at Sadler's Wells might be a head trip. There are eight, although one is billed as a "real" woman—a transsexual actress named Vanessa Van Durme—and what they do seems at first completely trite. Here are Liza, Marlene, Carol, and Gloria, treated as blow-up effigies of femininity. Last names are discretionary in a demi monde where your impersonation is your whole identity. The usual business was afoot: ultra glam costumes, dirty jokes ("How do you get four queers to sit on one dining room chair? Turn it upside down."), rouge thick enough for a baboon's bottom, and lip synching to "Somehwere Over the Rainbow." So far as content goes, Gardenia had almost none that wasn't as worn out as a drag queen's ________ (insert your own body part).

Read the full review on the Berkshire Review, an International journal for the Arts!







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