Do you ever wish you could sit down with the Almighty, and really just get down to brass tacks? Well, with God Is a Scottish Drag Queen, audiences can do just that.
Comedian Mike Delamont started his stage career here in Victoria, and now he’s coming back, and bringing his most-loved show with him. The last time Delamont performed here was over a decade ago, and it’s been non-stop touring for him and his wife Chantelle since then.
Delamont has many shows in the Scottish Drag Queen canon, but this will be something special.
“There are parts one, two, and three, as well as a Christmas special and a Halloween special that we have been workshopping, we are just starting to perform,” he says. “We’ve done a few of them in Victoria, but funnily enough we have never done the original. I’m not sure why it got skipped, it’s just how it worked out, I suppose, so I’m very glad we get to finally do it.”
The show, as you may have surmised, is about God being a drag queen with a thick Scottish brogue. It’s a take-no-prisoners, light-hearted spoof of all of creation, where, in Delamont’s words, “God is the comedian, not the punchline.” If you’re wondering where the Hell (or Heaven) the character came from, you’re not alone.
“I started off doing a monologue every month with [local theatre company] Atomic Vaudeville, and when I made the jump to Toronto to try to make it big, and it didn’t happen, I just decided to write my own show,” he says. “I thought about which characters I had played that I liked best and has the most to say, and obviously I landed on the God character. I wrote the first one-hour show, and it just blossomed on the Fringe circuit.”
Although this show has been around since 2015, you needn’t worry about the jokes being stale or outdated or divisive due to Delamont and Chantelle’s consistent workshopping of new material.
“We updated it again just this summer to play on the stages of London’s West End, so it’s never had a chance to go stagnant. They seemed to enjoy it, because they are bringing us back over for a 12-city UK tour in February,” he says. “I tend to think that a lot of comedy is quite mean at its core, and I made a decision many years ago that my material would never punch down. I wouldn’t make fun of people. I want people to know that they can bring their grandma. I love that my shows have such a diverse audience. There’s older folks, there’s young queer kids with brightly coloured hair, and they can all sit next to each other and laugh at the same jokes, and also experience moments of real heart, moments of sweetness. It’s about balance.”
God Is a Scottish Drag Queen
3:00 pm and 7:30 pm,
Saturday, October 25
$47.75 and up,
McPherson Playhouse
rmts.bc.ca