Dunstan Playhouse, 11 June

Trevor Ashley and Courtney Act were so pleased with themselves when they were preparing for the first run of Gentlemen Prefer Blokes. The show was tight, the costumes were fabulous. Then Courtney broke her leg. Really!

Anyway, the stalwart Virginia Gay stepped into the breach, and was such a hit they kept her, and the broken leg, in the show!  Three for the price of two, then, in this wildly camp evening.

Trevor and Virginia nearly stopped the show at the beginning with “Two Little Girls From Little Rock” in stunning red sequins only for chaos to break out as Courtney sailed on in an electric wheelchair!

Then it was non-stop action, part fun, part cat-fight, with witty, spiteful banter flying across the stage at lightspeed. I lost count at half a dozen costume changes, all of them stupendous, though Trevor’s appearance in a Madonna-esque pointy corset for “Like A Prayer” is burned onto the retinas!

Also splendid was the ‘Postoperative Transexuals For Jesus’ sequence where Sister Mary Magda Szubanski and Sister Halle Lujah, looking like Bo from Ab Fab, delivered a rousing chorus of “pray the gay away”! Fat chance, sisters! Audience member Todd was got up on stage to be purged of his evil. “There’s evil in that shirt!” cried one, unbuttoning away. Then heaven smiled, and lo, Todd had a nipple ring. “And there’s evil in that nipple!” cried the other, “let me suck it out!”.

The sets of numbers were interspersed with recorded video-clips which poked riotous fun at landmark camp movies, with “Whatever Happened To Baby Shane” a particular hit (Shane Jenek being the creator of Courtney Act’s ‘gender illusion’). 

Wicked got the full treatment, Courtney hysterical in “Popular”, and the girls singing up wizardly storms to riotously altered lyrics in “For Good” and, of course, “Defying Gravity”. Things came to an exhausting conclusion with a final preview (of Australia, featuring Trevor as the aboriginal child Nutella!) and “Sisters Are Doin’ It For Themselves” with synchronised choreography for three wheelchairs! A brilliantly funny show, impeccably produced, and a reminder of what a big, colourful genre cabaret can be.

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