Chic new thespian delights are afoot!

Well, well, well. It’s a new play! We love a new play! There’s nothing more refreshing than dewily fresh thespian delights, and this bunch of thespians are PARTICULARLY dewy (well, except on Sunday mornings).

Le Strange, Mzz Kimberley and The Nightbus are renowned, their notoriety spreading all the way from Hackney to Hackney Wick! We jest. They’re brilliant – all beautiful, original and diverting performers. Challenging too, in their own ways. They’ve come together in a beautiful ménage-a-trois to bring you one of the most diverting theatrical experiences of the season!

Penned by Le Strange, Tales of Fashionable Life is a queer cabaret retelling of Maria Edgeworth’s The Absentee, a unblinking evisceration of the Anglo-Irish absentee landlord class, and also a stark portrait of Irish peasantry, as well as the superficial glamour of upper class London life.

Below, we asked the three stars about their characters, and what we can expect from this camp and colourful new venture!

Le Strange

We all play multiple characters in this touching, bananas romp through the centuries. My principal character is our hero Lord Colambre, son of the batshit Irish emigre Lady Clonbrony – he’s dashing, unspeakably noble, and encrusted from head to toe in costume jewellery. The Nightbus and I also play the two campest party planners in Regency London – Messieurs Soho and Vauxhall.

Mzz Kimberley

Lady Clonbrony is a lady we all know, love and despise. There’s a bit of her in many people I’ve met on the scene. A lady who comes into a community desperate to be accepted, and would do anything to achieve. Many Lady Clonbronys pop up every year!

The Nightbus

Tales of Fashionable Life landed in front of me at an opportune moment, just as I began to feel my work was stale. The last few months in our fair city’s queer community have been challenging, divisive and difficult to navigate. With this work – a piece bigger than I and purposefully embedded in the stories of queer people – there’s an opportunity to shine an even more blinding light on those moments where our community as a whole is made to feel like we don’t belong. It’s a comical, heartfelt testament to the fact that queer people are the most capable of processing hate into love and art. And the joy of putting on my most brash Irish accent for the delectably trifling grocer’s wife Mrs Rafferty is the joy I never knew I needed to complete my big brown life.