Interview w/ The LipSinkers : “Drag is already laced through British entertainment history and like any art form it needs to keep evolving”

The LipSinkers brought a little London glamour, sparkle and fun down to Plymouth at B-Bar with two raucous sell-out shows this weekend. The luscious lip-syncing troupe combines all the best elements of drag, slapstick comedy and cabaret theatre- creating a performance that is slick, sexy and fantastically funny.

The group, made up of Richardette, Lisa Lee, Blanche Dubois, Smelly Mae and Steve Nice, have a great infectious energy, diving onto stage with true panache and enthusiasm. Each of the five gorgeous performers had an amazing sense of timing and the lip syncing was so on point you could at times forget that they weren’t actually singing!

While they performed more political and thought provoking songs like Malvina Reynold’s Little Boxes or Jeffrey Lewis & the Rain’s WWPRD? (What Would Pussy Riot Do?), they also performed more classically camp numbers and the evening had a sense of fun keeping the audience totally enraptured. The whole act was well executed, between the awesome lighting effects and smooth running of the show it felt more Broadway than Barbican. Between setting up the larger routines, quick skits entertained the crowd, Richardette had the crowd in fits impersonating the e-harmony cat lady from the viral video. While one of the major highlights of the act was an unexpectedly technically phenomenal and truly scandalising fan dance!

From being ten minutes fashionably late on-stage to their powerful Queen finale the LipSinkers delivered a truly killer, mischievous and lovable show. Hopefully we’ll start seeing more acts of this calibre and extravagant originality in Plymouth from now on.

9.5/10

Interview:

Following their two day run at B-Bar, I threw a few questions 

at the wonderfully sweet Richardette:

So how did The LipSinkers form?

The LipSinkers formed almost 10 years ago out of London’s cabaret boom.

Two pre-sold out shows and a standing ovation from the crowd! Plymouth is clearly hungry for more of the LipSinkers; can we expect to see you in the Deep South more often?

It’s our 5th visit to Plymouth since 2008, we expect to be back next February, we’re also in talks of returning earlier for a summer season. We <3 Kabaret Kaos at The Barbican Theatre!!

There’s a good variety of music in the show. How do you select the songs you’re going to use?

We try to spread our net far and wide when it comes to musical choices. Sometimes the songs find us, sometimes we find them.

Are there any artists or acts you’d like to recommend to our readers?

We are very fond of a band called The Lovely Eggs from Lancashire who have a distinctive style and left field approach which very much appeals to us. @TheLovelyEggs

Also we highly recommend you go see our very funny friend who performs stand-up, Mr David Mills. @davidmillsdept

The show’s choreography and use of props is really inventive, (those costume changes are lightning quick). Do any acts or singers inspire you and your visual styles?

Inspiration comes from all over the place. We’re a five strong company of three different nationalities and varying ages so we’re lucky to be quite rich in different experiences and reference points.

What’s your favourite routine to perform or part of performing?

An important part of what we do is to keep changing the show – we never perform the same show twice and as such we do have favourites but they often change for each of us from show to show.

The act can be quite topical, for example you perform Jeffery Lewis & the Rain’s WWPRD (What Would Pussy Riot Do). As a group is it important to you to raise awareness of these cases of oppression, or try and use your act to get the audience thinking about issues?

It is very important to us to give the work a political edge and we like to reference current affairs wherever we can.

With the popularity of Ru Paul’s Drag Race (and the upcoming UK edition), and mainstream designers like Versace finally using trans and drag models, do you think we’ll start to see a much needed rise in tolerance and increase of drag popularity in the UK?

Drag is already laced through British entertainment history and like any art form it needs to keep evolving. As a separate issue we hope for equality, acceptance, understanding and diversity to continue playing a large role in human development on Planet Earth.

What advice would you give to any aspiring drag artists or performance artists?

Judy Garland once said “be a first rate version of yourself rather than a second rate version of somebody else” that’s worth remembering at times along the way.

What’s next for you gals? Anything exciting coming up we should know about?

Next up we return to London for shows in Vauxhall at The Vauxhall Tavern and Hackney at Hackney Attic and we will continue work on new material for our Edinburgh Fringe Show.