EIGHT: The One (Wo) Man Drag King Musical Parody
Written, performed, designed and produced by Hannah Clift
Bridge House Theatre, Penge
Star rating: 3.5
Imagine Henry VIII back 478 years after his death to defend himself against the slurs cast by those women pretending to be his queens in a theatrical piece called “Six.” It’s a clever idea for a show and Hannah Clift is an accomplished performer, working her audience to the manner born and managing to sing in a wide range of spoof styles including Meatloaf, Celine Dion and Ed Sheeran.
She does sexy male hip thrusts perfectly and delivers her script’s many double entendres with impeccable timing. She also gets three audience members up to dance a gloriously silly galliard. She nips in and out of role to good effect too.
Her costume is neat. It’s a dress (sort of) which looks like armour complete with codpiece, over which she wears a swirling red cloak and really does look the Henry we know from portraits. When the cloak comes off and she discards the cap it makes a point about different moods.
In general it’s a very funny, pretty original show which has already been to Edinburgh, Brighton Fringe and other venues.
The problem with it, however, is that it must – by convention for this sort of show – run for 60 minutes but seems to run out of ideas about 45 minutes in. It needs another song or two about some of the other Queens – maybe poor 17 year old Katherine Howard who was effectively pimped to 49 year old Henry by her uncle, The Duke of Norfolk and then set up for adultery and beheaded. Clift could have a field day with Henry’s take on this.
Nonetheless I drove home still chuckling at Clift’s playful anachronisms. Her Henry would send his 21st century victims to the Tower but it would be tourists – shock horror – they’d have to face as punishment rather than beheading. And of course, Henry was born second in line and only became heir after the death of his elder brother Arthur – cue for a whole routine about heirs, spares and a different Prince Harry.
