Dragging Your Heels at New Wimbledon Theatre Studio, London.
Star rating: three stars ★ ★ ★ ✩ ✩
A bisexual 40-year-old builder named Ben who dreams of being a stand-up comedian divorces amicably after an unsatisfying 20-year marriage that has run its course and is finally free to be what he really wants to be.
And when his boss Callum introduces him to gay bars and he strikes up a friendship with drag queen Tammy Scowls, he learns how to cope with his stage fright, how to walk on bright red high heels (much harder than you think!) and carry off an outrageous orange costume and matching wig to become his alter ego, Pumpkin Spice, and join the human race on his terms.
It took him half a lifetime to get there and the theme of this queer one-acter is to tell its audience: Don’t dally – “why not do the things in life that are just for you? Our childhood dreams get lost somehow ’tween working late and washing gowns. Dream your life, live your dream. It doesn’t have to be as hard as it seems. Live your life to the fullest and stop… DRAGGING YOUR HEELS!”
That is the positive call to arms of songwriter Will Stead who wrote that number as the climax to a sweet little mini musical, barely an hour long, which premiered at the New Wimbledon Studio before heading off to the Camden Fringe festival in August.
Stead’s other four numbers, ‘Heart of Stone’, ‘Who Am I?’, Tammy’s ‘Drag Queen’s Lament’ and ‘Walking on the Wild Side’ are equally relevant, interesting and well sung by Terry Geo as Ben, Michael Dalton as drag queen Tammy and Tafadzwa Madubeko as Callum.
Dalton is well known as Dolly Diamond in Australian drag circles, the character he created in the late 1990s after his family emigrated from England where the 10-year-old earned early renown in the title role of Oliver! The timing is still there even when a dodgy sound system lets him down and his catty barbs certainly put the audience in their place, me included!
In queer slang, Ben is a ‘bear’, cuddly, 40-ish and hairy, and Callum a ‘twink’, slim, toned and smooth-chested. The theme of this never-dull little piece is that there’s room for everyone so go out there and embrace the world, don’t run scared of it.
It reminded me a little of Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, but for a different generation, and the show an endearing quality to it so that you want it to do well, despite the rather chaotic presentation and flat finish. Where we want a triumphant climax with Ben knocking it out of the park in his orange sequins, the writing fails to measure up to the visuals. That scene needs to be slicker, sharper and, yes, funnier because there’s the germ of a decent little show here.
Director Paul T Davies has three weeks to smarten it up before its four-day run at the Camden People’s Theatre from 19-23 August. I wish it well.
Jeremy Chapman
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