I love Fringe festivals. And Qtopia’s Pridefest is essentially a Fringe festival for solely queer art so it’s even better! One of the highlights of Fringe is diversity in programming and everyone having space to produce their weird and wonderful shows. On Friday night, I got to peek inside Burger Queen’s mind for an hour. She put on a cabaret/comedy hour about being fiercely queer, proud of yourself and maybe just a little bit jaded with the current dating pool in Sydney.
Though there was only a small crowd on Friday, Burger Queen had something about her that made us want to participate and bring the energy to the room. She is a drag performer from Western Sydney who considers herself an elder queen, a queen of wisdom and advice for younger queens as evidenced with her friendship with Anita Book. Their intergenerational friendship was platformed throughout the show and this was very heartwarming. Anita is a young gun queen who I’m sure has a wonderful drag career ahead of her. She treated us to a lipsync of a classic 80s Bananarama banger in which her attitude and charisma were palpable.
There were some great song choices in the and Burger Queen’s voice was well suited to many of these, especially the song from Muriel’s Wedding. I especially enjoyed her original song which was called “All You Can Eat” – I can’t wait for this to come out on Spotify. Truly inspired. Some of the other songs could have done with some editing, sometimes you can get your meaning across and keep the show moving in a more punchy way by slicing up the songs a little.
I really enjoyed Burger Queen’s vulnerability. At the beginning she seemed nervous as she wasn’t connecting with the audience much. However, a couple of songs in and with some chatting, she opened up and was both engaging and endearing. Her comedy was relatable, though at times repetitive and often self-deprecating. I loved the cheekiness of referring back to notes (and perhaps resonated with the neurospiciness of this) although I do think this made it harder at times to connect with the audience. It seemed that perhaps every show Burger Queen does is different, depending on how she feels on the night. The show I saw didn’t hit some of the points I was looking forward to based on the description, namely grumpy customer service and an indictment of capitalism.
I would have liked to see Anita Book take a more active role, as it became a little one note with her reading on the side, maybe she could have passed the black folder to Burger Queen, been a back up dancer for some songs or helped facilitate an outfit change to add some dynamics to the staging and the show. The lighting was well utilised and the conversational tone of the show put the audience at ease.
Burger Queen’s subversive statement of wearing crocs on stage and the idea of the costuming, aka wearing whatever you want was powerful, but I believe there could have (always) been more rhinestones. Overall, this show was a big fuck you to the expectations placed on performers and was a really gritty, fringe style, self-produced chaotic hour in a way that makes you love it.
To book tickets to Do You Want Lies With That?, please visit https://tickets.qtopiasydney.com.au/Events/Do-You-Want-Lies-With-That-.
