Love London Love Culture spoke to Denim’s Crystal about bringing The Reunion Tour to the Soho Theatre next month….
How excited are you about bringing your show to Soho Theatre in November?
Very. It’s so good to be able to play these intimate spaces for the real diehard fans. As a troupe we’ve had people following us from the very beginning — that’s 36 years at this point — so it’s really quite special to be able to give back to the people who’ve been there since the start. We are so grateful for the support of our wider fanbase, and of course, we adore playing the stadiums, but really there’s nothing quite like getting up close and personal with people, especially since global fame has taken us away from that kind of interaction. We are so grateful to the Soho Theatre for having us, too, and the overheads for them in terms of security and restrictions are wild, so we’re just so pleased they could accommodate us.
What can audiences expect from the show?
Pure pop prowess, pretty probing politics, very voluptuous vocals, seriously sizzling sexuality, daringly delicious dancing, languidly louche live music, corrosively cackle-worthy comedy, and a million pounds each.
What do you love most about performing live for audiences?
Honestly, it’s the emotion of the whole thing. No matter how many times we tread those boards, every night will be wildly different. It’s like an assault course of joy — sometimes people cry, sometimes people laugh, one time someone was genuinely taken away in an ambulance. It’s thrilling, it’s intimate, it’s moving. And I think, most of all, we like to create a space of empowerment where audiences can come and recharge and realise that queerness and gender-nonconformity are beautiful, powerful. We hope people leave our temporary queertopia and go and spread messages of love, change, active engagement into the world. God knows we need it.
For those who have never seen you before, why should they come to see the show?
Because I’m looking for a husband? No, scratch that. Because people think drag is one thing — what they’ve seen on TV — and it’s actually much more than that. We are singing, dancing, comical, but most importantly we are political. We want people to enter our world through the joy of pop, through songs they love and characters they can fall in love with, but we also want to change people’s minds. So come to our show and have your life changed.
What next for you all? Well, Glamrou is currently planning her outfit for her eighteenth Oscar win; Crystal is prepping for a big insurance claim against her house which recently, mysteriously, burnt down and killed her ninth husband; Aphrodite is dropping off the kids at boarding school ready to come back out on tour; Shirley is in the process of expanding her cult ‘Shirl’ to all fifty states; and Electra is about to complete her rabbinical training! All super exciting stuff!
Denim: The Reunion Tour will play at the Soho Theatre from 14 November until 1 December 2018.
