Promoted as a drag Giselle, I have to report Giselle: Remix has not taken a leaf from The Trocks. It is not full-on drag queen, but a mix of cabaret and lip-synch disco ball mini-musical. It feels embryonic, though the guest night audience tonight seems to fall for it completely, cheering and hollering throughout. A hip young guy sitting at a stage-adjacent table captures my attention with his reaction: open-mouthed throughout, surely he’s not that innocent… Is he a plant?
Jack Sears, co creator and writer, is Giselle in see-through frilly nightie. Her supportive chorus of four is likewise dressed. But before the convoluted version begins, and before we meet Giselle, we have a warm-up from stand-up guest artist (different ones on different dates), Kit Green, formerly Christopher Green, lip-syncing to torch song “Stormy Weather”. She steals the show.
You can imagine Judy Garland or Liza Minnelli or even Debbie Reynolds in rain mac and scarf sitting on a stool under a solo spot. Kit has great rapport with the audience seated at small tables with their drinks and nibbles. They shout encouragement, untie her scarf, take off her wellies and socks, willing and eager assistants. Maybe the alcohol helps.
She closes the evening singing Harold Arlen / Ted Koehler’s 1930 “Get Happy”. It’s been a journey for the troubled, betrayed in love Giselle, from the faux romantic hopes of Hollywood films to the crushing darkness of real life. But it’s an odd journey. Why is she dressed in a red evening cloak like a diva? Is she imagining being famous? Sears is centre stage throughout.
Then the light changes, darkness falls and dry ice and smoke fill the space. It is definitely not the land of the Wilis, more like Star Wars. Now she looks like Darth Vader, head to toe in “cloak of vengeance” molten black PVC. Helmet cover off, her head is still masked but for the mouth and I think what a marvellous mobile mouth for Samuel Beckett’s Not I.
Or is she channelling the wicked Carabosse with her minions from Sleeping Beauty? To a heavy club beat, the chorus, in black bondage gear (mildly so, nothing to scare the natives) and ‘punk’ DMs, simulate a sex orgy, grind hips and crotches in the audience’s faces.
We now get a bit potty mouthed (like naughty children) in the voiced script Giselle half-heartedly lip-syncs to, making eyes at us. Is that Miriam Margolyes we can hear offering to suck someone’s dick? Is that Quentin Crisp? The travails of being queer, of being different, are recounted, and acceptance asked.
Only seventy-five minutes long without interval, with choreography by Royal Ballet Soloist Hannah Grennell, costumes by Laura Rose Moran-Morris, Sears and the four dancers (Harri Eiffert, Elle Fierce, Spike King, and Marie Astrid Mence formally with Ballet Black from 2014 to 2021) do their supple best with a limited vocabulary on a tiny stage.
Edinburgh Fringe Festival is where it will probably do well. But it hasn't found its real dynamic yet.