Dragapella Drives the Crowd Wild

By Gaetan L. Charlebois
Montreal Gazette
July 19, 2002

Special to the Gazette

They are coming into the lionesses' den.

The Kinseys Sicks, called "America's favourite Dragapella beautyshop quartet" by the Just for Laughs Website, is in Montreal.

But here, girls, we take drag seriously.

Guilda, our most glamourous drag artist, still holds court from time to time, performing in the style of the great "travestis" from the Paris and Clubland, Montreal of the 1950s.

We have Mado Lamotte, who can thrill you with her ensembles one minutes and smack you upside the head with her tongue the next. And even in Just for Laughs, you get a healthy dose of drag with Arturo Brachetti's show; swishing about, as he does, in some magnificent gowns.

So, Dragapella, don't come knocking here unless you've got something really special.

Oh, you claim to be different: you aren't lip-syncing, for one thing, you're actually doing the songs; you say you're bringing satire, tasteless shtick and subtle lyricism. Well, bring it on, ladies.

And bring it on they did. Even before the lights went up, an announcement: "The management would like to tell you that if your cell phone should ring during the show, the performers will come into the audience to shove it up you're a--."

Then, beautifully sung and danced a cappella tunes that were actually comic and occasionally politically savvy versions of pop standards.

Don't Worry, Be Happy became a Jewish kvetch, Don't Be Happy, Worry; Michael Jackson's ABC became a song about the AIDS drug AZT; Love Child became a plaint about artificial insemination and Fever became Beaver (don't ask).

And the quartet even took a run at our Celine Nationale with their version of the theme from Titanic. Interspersed was some bitchy chat, audience participation, and a kind of complicity you don't often see in even the tightest of ensembles.

It was a lark with substance and the audience (and I) went wild at its end.