The world tour of the latest show from RuPaul’s Drag Race, Werq the World, ended its European run with a wild, party night at Wales Millennium Centre.
The more you know about the Drag Race the more you will have got from the show – as demonstrated by the deafening cheering each time one of the stars appeared – but even for a novice like me, this was a great evening of fun, mega camp, mega bitchy and massively entertaining.
The story of the show is pretty daft (saving the universe by calling on the queens from different planets in the solar system) and frankly didn’t really matter as it was just a vehicle for the larger than life characters (and stonking dancers) to put on ever increasingly outlandish costumes and lip sync to pumping songs. Asia was the host for the evening and was joined by Aquaria, Detox, Kameron Michaels, Kim Chi, Naomi Smalls, Monét X Change and Violet Chachki.
Asia O’Hara proved to be great at working the huge, loud, young and mega excited crowd at WMC with a great flow of banter, one liners, put downs of other stars from DragRace seasons and some rather naughty games with the audience. (Fancy winning a prize by being an audience member who can quickly show a pick of his willy on his mobile phone – and I wish I had the confidence of the teenagers who came on to stage to take part in a two-minute get dragged up race including a 16-year-old Cardiff High school boy.)
The routines included displays of impressive skills from aerial skills, gymnastics, some cutting moves and, of course, lip syncing with attitude.
The audience was in a permanent state of rapture as the show moved across the solar system, each introduced by a recorded narrator with a voice of doom (think a cross between War of the Worlds and Rocky Horror Show).
As this was the last night of the tour, at the end the cast introduced all of the crew for the tour and after the planned curtain call there was a couple more with the team dancing and celebrating on stage.
I am not a great fan of drag where men in tacky costumes just mime to songs but this was certainly not that – this was a troupe of multi talented performers in a high quality show packed with skilfully created characters, honed stage craft and strong production values.