Writer: Coggin Galbreath
Director: Ryan Hay
The beauty pageant is a peculiarly antiquated spectacle, at least in its original form as a competition for young cisgender women. Such contests inspired their drag equivalents, which take the structure of pageantry and use it to celebrate queer and non-binary performance art. In turn, elements of the drag pageant have become popularised through RuPaul’s Drag Race, which has cannibalised both ballroom culture and pageantry contests to form a multi-million dollar global franchise.
The pageant to which drag queen Patti Boo Rae (alias writer Coggin Galbreath) has entered is substantially smaller than that, but the reward – a Candy Cane Crown – is something that Patti craves above all else. Determined to win the title of Little Miss Christmas for the fifth year in a row, Patti sets out to convince the audience – each of whom has a vote to determine the winner – that the crown is hers, and hers alone.
Galbreath mines Patti’s lust for glory at any price to great comedic effect, both as writer and performer. Little Miss Christmas is a combination of stand-up, lip-sync, live singing and video-recorded skits, the latter of which cover Patti Boo Rae’s numerous costume changes. Each sequence demonstrates Patti’s genuine skills, though some, such as a Q&A session, may need a little more work to feel less heavily scripted.
For every sequence that doesn’t quite work, though, there are more that do. The pageant’s swimsuit sequence features Patti performing an ‘underwater’ rendition of Blue Christmas that combines physical comedy with precise timing, while a subtly altered version of Santa Baby offers a more conventional yet no less witty approach to Christmas humour.
Many of the video inserts share the same trademark humour, especially a prolonged series of takes in a commercial for No-Egg Nog, a vegan rum product, in which Patti Boo Rae gets increasingly drunk on the noxious substance. Perhaps the most astute clip, though, is an archival segment of former beauty queen Anita Bryant performing Blues in the Night at a corporate event to promote Tupperware. It’s a hilariously awful glimpse at how the pageant system subjected young women to ridiculous tasks, made all the sharper in the knowledge that Bryant would go on to become one of the most notorious anti-gay activists of the 20th century.
But the main focus always returns to Patti Boo Rae and her quest for victory – a quest made harder when her plan to be this year’s sole competitor is scuppered. A different cabaret star joins the fray each night of the show’s run, with the role undertaken on press night by queer Filipino-British multidisciplinary movement artist Duane Nasis. As the contest reaches the talent stage, Nasis performs a sensuous and sultry dance, described as a native Filipino mating ritual – a description one can quite believe is accurate.
The laughs continue to come as thick and fast as No-Egg Nog, but far more palatable. When the time comes to crown the victor and bring the Little Miss Christmas pageant to a close, even Patti’s underhanded tactics to ensure a win can’t beat her undoubted charisma. As a camp celebration to get everyone into the Yuletide mood, Little Miss Christmas’s narrative cabaret delivers exactly what one needs.
Runs until 3 January 2026
