Blaque Showgirls
Tits up, girls! Follow me. The most outrageous show in Sydney is here for a limited time, but you’ve gotta be in the know. Just take a turn out of Kings Cross, and high-kick your way down to that little theatre in the former horse stables. In there you’ll find a portal to the bright lights of Brisvegas – as reflected through the funhouse-mirror imagination of one of the country’s most cunning writers, Nakkiah Lui (Black is the New White; Black Comedy). From the moment the spotlight illuminates the first performer, you might think you’ve stumbled into a high-end drag-burlesque show – with the head bitch of the Blaque Showgirls, Chandon (Jonathan Jeffrey), voguing the house down with a rapturous dance devoted to the sacred “bin chicken”. But, friends, this is proper theatre – and it only gets more silly and surprisingly solemn as it goes on. [Blaque Showgirls is] so silly, so full of heart and so poignantly honest. Taking inspiration from the so-bad-it's-good raunchy cinematic masterpiece Showgirls, this farcical play is built on the foundation of Lui’s trademark mix of wit, social commentary and balls-to-the-wall silliness – with a throughline of First Nations pride. Stephanie Somerville (Chalkface, The Bleeding Tree) leads the all-Indigenous cast as fair-skinned dance enthusiast Sarah Jane Jones. When the naive Sarah gets a whiff of evidence of her Indigenous ancestry, she high-tails it to the glitziest casino in Brisvegas. Her mission? To land a role in the First Nations