Costume designers are the unsung heroes of drag and nowhere more so than in Le Gateau Chocolat and Jonny Woo: A Night at the Musicals – 90 Years of Drag! playing in the main house at the Soho Theatre for three weeks. The uncredited geniuses behind the many costume changes in this show set the stage for every tonal lurch, every comic reveal and every showstopping moment. From a sequinned Little Mermaid to babydoll yellow rain macs, matching jump suits and even a Lion King kitty costume, it’s astonishing how many musical diva outfits our hosts can wear in only 60-minutes.
Le Gateau Chocolat and Jonny Woo are those hosts, the self-styled “Richard and Judy of drag”, celebrating big birthdays with a show about their favourite musical songs which they simultaneously commemorate and send-up. With 11 songs across the hour performance, there is a nice mix of duets, solos and medleys while drawing inspiration from stage and screen musicals, all of which the audience will recognise, and singing along is actively encouraged.
The links are, by their own admission, decidedly, even deliberately, tenuous with Woo embarking on a long introduction to the first solo number involving a canal boat, a farmer friend-of-a-friend and lots of sparkly dresses before launching into Sweet Transvestite from The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Not to be upstaged, Le Gateau Chocolat emerges to a Lion King track in full costume but joyously wrong-foots us with Memory from Cats while sampling The Eye of the Tiger in the slower bits.
In fact, the inventive medleys are some of A Night at the Musicals’ most ingenious moments, taking the audience by surprise every time. When Woo enrobed as the poo emoji – another inspired costume design – adapts Singing in the Rain to Singing in the Drain, it soon blends with It’s Raining Men and with his co-star’s help a lip-synced Don’t Rain on My Parade replete with costume changes. Woo quite literally pulls off another remarkable quadruple outfit change during a lip-synced Gypsy medley that leaves little to the imagination.
Amidst all the high jinks, there is one real moment of pause as Le Gateau Chocolat pays a very serious tribute to Olivia Newton John with a slow and poignant rendition of Hopelessly Devoted to You from Grease. This sudden but truly heartfelt moment takes the room by surprise, swept up for a while in the emotion of the gesture, and although the energy rises again immediately, it adds real heart to a show that truly loves its subject matter and those who have clearly inspired this pairing.
A Night at the Musicals does revel in its low-budget and the sometimes meta approach slows down the transitions, but even the simplicity of bubbles or smoke blown around by some table fans manages to add plenty of atmosphere as Woo and Le Gateau Chocolat recreate sequences taken from shows as diverse as Dreamgirls, Chicago, and The Sound of Music. But no one minds at all and as the whole audience is on their feet dancing the Time Warp and singing along to Summer Nights, the genuine smiles on everyone’s faces are all that matter.
Runs until 21 January 2023
The Reviews Hub Score
Joyous
