Theatre / Reviews
Review: Strapped, the Island – ‘Visceral extravagant queer chaos’
It’s a Friday night at the Applebob club, a gay bar in Hackney, and drag queen Yeast Splendour is commanding her crowd (the audience) with audacious one-liners and a dazzling Marilyn Monroe mop.
But the party is interrupted by Zoe, an angry homophobic outsider descending on the club to exact revenge on everything the Applebob club stands for.
It’s this standoff between Zoe from the “ Nightingale estates” and the queer community that call the Applebob club their home that forms the premise in Strapped, a tale of crime, queer revenge, salacious stories and intertwined relationhships.
is needed now More than ever
Strapped is the new play from theatre group Toxic Shock, a Bristol-based feminist theatre company which creates stories centred around violent women and female rage.
In their latest production, a gay man has been murdered while leaving his boyfriend’s flat, and now the local drag queens are ready for war.
Henry (left) and Bianchi (middle) with Eliza (right)
As the feds and the press refuse to acknowledge the murder as homophobic, Yeast Splendour vows to protest in any way she can.
Director Sadie Mears and writer Leo Russell have promised to take “a bold – and unapologetically queer – take on the crime genre.”
And they certainly have. Strapped is an in-your-face, subversive crime-fuelled drama filled with comedy, violence, passion and blood, all scored to a Britney Spears soundtrack.
Visceral and gritty, there’s no escaping the play’s immersiveness. From audience questions which range from what you had for breakfast this morning to the reasons young kids carry knives, to a violent waterboarding scene in which any audience items placed beneath the seats are soaked from the water flooding the stage.
Drag queen Yeast Splendour, known to her friends as Tony, is flamboyant and serious in equal measure
The writing and timeline is chaotic in this amateur production, so don’t expect to keep up with what’s going on, but it’s chaos is what makes it brilliant and hysterical, as the actors lean into the disorder and mayhem, tripping over microphones, dancing to music and fumbling into new clothes to change character.
There’s some really strong characters too. Eliza is the deeply paranoid, violent and drug-fuelled wife of Zoe’s brother Mick. She’s disturbingly excellent, exuding a scatty, anxious, coke-fuelled energy that is both intoxicating and difficult to watch.
And there’s Toni – or drag queen Yeast Splendour – whose earnestness, sense of justice, charm and flamboyance are captivating.
Henry, the posh vivacious gay friend who flies too close to the sun is hilarious, and so is Biancha, the cunning, flirtatious and slightly toxic co-club owner, who tames Zoe’s homophobia and teases out her inner lesbian.
Strapped is a wild, mayhem-fuelled ride with some admirable serious performances from its small cast, albeit slightly rough around the edges.
All photos: Joe Pinner
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