What’s Love Got to Do With It?

As we take our seats Tina Turner is on the PA, belting out the song with the same title as this show – and I wonder, ‘Is that setting the bar a little high?’  Then Nefertiti LaNegra appears – a tall, very well-built man – in ‘outrageous’ drag queen attire – a cascade of crimped, honey-blonde hair, dramatic silver, black and green eye shadow, heavy jewellery, white cloak with fur collar over a sparkly fabric cutaway frock exposing midriff and a lot of leg – and a nicely trimmed goatee beard.  The ensemble says, or tries to say, ‘Wow!  Jus’ look at me!’  And the first song is ‘Young, Gifted and Black’. 

The first gag is that maybe we were expecting Judy Garland, but what we’re getting is Serena Williams!  We laugh politely, but the joke is off: we saw the poster and chose this show, so Judy Garland was not our expectation, nor is Nefertiti reminiscent in any way of a tennis star, ferocious or not.

This beginning is – or is intended to be - an assault on the audience… but we like Nefertiti right off, maybe because we sense her creator, Mark Brown II, behind the artifice that is Nefertiti.  Covering up that he is a little shy?  Nervous?  Really, really wanting to make this work.  And we go on liking him – even when more than a tinge of self-pity in the material takes over.

Nefertiti’s show is, more or less, traditional one-person cabaret.  Some autobiographical spiel (sassy, explicit, confrontational), some of that spiel chatting with the audience while moving amongst them (these moves tend to exclude folks in the front rows who no doubt figured they’d be up close and personal).  There’s some interaction with pianist, James Simpson (too loud throughout), and there are eleven songs across the fifty-five-minute show.  Some switch from comic upbeat to sad, sad and wistful, regretful and downright melancholy. 

Nefertiti acknowledges an Afro-American and a Puerto Rican heritage and there’s a lyrically beautiful – but sad – song in Spanish.  But after a great rendition of ‘The Man That Got Away’ and then ‘Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend’ – with some rough-edged choreography – the trajectory is downward and into songs and spiel about bad times in the search for love – of being lied to, exploited, beaten and abandoned.  Songs flow into ‘Tears Dry On Their Own’ and ‘Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?’ 

In short, the show is a set of contradictions: the patter is bright, pushy and aggressive, but when Nefertiti sings (and she can sing well), she’s suddenly vulnerable and just a little tentative.  The not-quite-right wardrobe says dazzling, brazen, in-your-face, but the songs and stories are about being used and abused.  And the beard is, of course, ‘wrong’ but not in that genuine gender-bender way displayed by ‘Conchita’ at Eurovision; Conchita is ‘feminine’, almost demure – but there’s a beard too…

Maybe I’m a traditionalist, but a drag queen playing ‘poor me’ just doesn’t seem right.  Shouldn’t it be laughing through the tears?  Tears, maybe, but laughing?  The show has the feel of a sort of a try-out.  Testing for audience response and what feels right.  In fact, it’s not a try-out – or at least not of the Nefertiti persona - but it still feels that way.  He (or she), however, is going to go on making this show better and better because as well as talented and so likeable there’s sensitivity and intelligence there too. 

Michael Brindley