Provided as a part of Auckland Pleasure Competition 2024, Sirens of the Silver Display screen is a captivating and energetic drag cabaret, which pays homage to the plots and songs of fashionable movies.
Miss Manner, Miss Givings, and Miss Handle present renditions of songs which typify the nostalgia of movies passed by. These performances had been slotted right into a unfastened narrative arc, which borrowed plot factors from an unlimited pool of well-known films. Sister Act, Notting Hill, James Bond, Star Wars, Titanic, and 10 Issues I Hate About You, are however a small number of the plots intimated. This created a really unfastened narrative drawing from a number of sources that the viewers would pay attention to, making a nostalgia smorgasbord. Moreover, the unfastened narrative construction encourages the viewers to droop their disbelief, and play with the performers.
The performances are outstanding. The queens are very succesful singers, and had nice stage presence. Every will get ample solo and lead alternatives, and the harmonies are well-honed. The choreography, too, is well-executed and the queens do a wonderful job of utilising the house with ease and beauty. The performances are at their finest when the queens are all onstage, and capable of work off one another’s vitality, motion, and singing.
The performers included numerous viewers interplay, which was well-implemented and humorous. The queens gave viewers members roles onstage, gave props out, bantered with the viewers, and even introduced a personalised singing telegram. In true drag fashion, there are various double entendres and far sexual innuendo. The exaggerated dialogue and gesture are paying homage to vaudeville and pantomime, and work effectively throughout the fashion and artifice created.
The seven-piece stay band is phenomenal, including a dynamic vary to the queens’ vocal performances and a vitality to the piece general. The musicians are very technically proficient, and wend by the difficult modifications and medleys with ease. They kind a cohesive unit and create a sonic and spatial platform for the queens to construct upon. The queens labored effectively inside this set-up, and their vocals had been usually clear and articulate within the combine. The exception to this was that generally, throughout a musical crescendo, some dialogue could be misplaced. This was not usually, and didn’t detract from the piece as an entire.
The set was paying homage to a footlight stage, or a greenroom mirror, with incandescent lightbulb preparations bordering the usable stage house. This was visually spectacular, and creates a suitably glitzy, however non-specific, backdrop for the performers to work inside. The lighting design is fittingly complicated and provides a lot to the queens’ costumes, the tone of the musical numbers, and the temper of the scenes. The costumes had been quite a few and stylistically delineated between the performers. The queens not often stray from their particular person color schemes of pink (Miss Givings), purple (Miss Handle), and inexperienced (Miss Manner). The performers additionally utilise vibrant lighting on impartial black costumes to convey many characters and moods. The velocity of those costume modifications is especially spectacular, as is the truth that the present retains going whereas these modifications happen. The costume modifications are sometimes masked by solo performances, voice-over narration, or viewers interplay. The hybrid nature of those distractions means the tempo and vitality is stored excessive all through the efficiency.
Sirens of the Silver Display screen is an entertaining and nostalgic piece, which is each visually and aurally spectacular. The set, costume, and lighting are fabulously lavish. The band are expert, and provides a vibrancy to the piece {that a} recorded monitor might by no means hope to duplicate. The queens are sturdy and charming performers, and current a pointy and unrelenting piece.
Sirens of the Silver Display screen performs at Q Theatre, from twenty second to twenty fifth February 2024, after which embarks on a North Island Tour from twenty sixth February to tenth March 2024.
