2022 Drag Race winner sashays in with new show

“I suppose I fell into drag,” Danny Beard, already a winner of RuPaul’s Drag Race and a burgeoning cabaret superstar, is telling me how it all started for them. “I wanted to be a stage school kid, but didn’t get in. I got offered foundation degrees and ended up doing one in acting. I learned to be this performative version of myself. Which sounds very arty farty, and it is...” Electing to do a course in contemporary theatre practice at university, they soon became entranced by the 80 Club Kids scene, which spawned icons like Boy George and Leigh Bowery.

“Just to have felt part of that in some small way would have felt fab. I hope someone comes to my show, who doesn’t have a clue who I am or what I do, but leaves thinking it was cool. I’d love that.” Spin forwards a few years, and that show may well be Beard’s Straight Expectations musical spectacular. It builds on last year’s sell-out debut tour and hugely-acclaimed Edinburgh Fringe run. Now Beard and their full live band return with an evening of huge songs, brilliant one-liners, scandalous behaviour and plenty of laughs. It’s a no-holds-barred look at the world of a 6-foot, scouse drag queen.

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It makes me wonder if the titular ‘expectations’ refer to the audience coming to see him, or those weighed upon this self-proclaimed ‘shady, singing, cartoon clown’ as a youngster. “It’s a bit of both really,” they tell me. “We get asked what we’re going to call it before we even know what the show is about. I do like a good pun. I suppose it’s about my view of the world as a drag queen, as a gay person and as someone who would call themselves queer. It’s my view on straight culture and what I think straight people expect drag queens to do, say and behave. Some of it is bang on right. and some couldn’t be further from the truth..!”

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The one thing you carry into a drag show is expectations. It’ll be much more than you think. Thriving at the intersection of musical theatre, stand-up and clowning, it manages to become more than the sum of those parts – a place where an act can transcend who they are and transform into something truly special. “It can be so much. Certainly, when we were coming up with what we were going to do, there was this pressure of setting myself apart. I’m lucky enough to be the first Drag Race star who has toured with a band with this kind of theatre style show. I love it. But I’ve done ten plus years in the gay clubs.”

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Only last night they were performing at Heaven, and Beard tries to remain a constant face on the scene. “That was really my training ground. But this is me now trying to push the artform. There’s an opportunity to work with five amazing musicians, who are all so skilled, and they bring so much more to the show. There’s a vibrancy, life and quality. I want to be the best drag queen there is,” they pause for a hearty laugh. “That’s the delusion of drag... I probably never will be, but I can certainly try.”

Travelling around the country this month, Straight Expectations calls in at Brighton’s Komedia on Thurs 19 Sept, before eventually ending at London’s prestigious Peacock Theatre. Music provides the backbone of the whole show, while the glue is the moments with Beard and their audience. There’s at least 60% of the show which hasn’t been prewritten, so it will be different for every performance on the tour. “Mostly because I love the artform of riffing with the audience. So, it’s a drag cabaret show, which everyone knows and loves, but on steroids.”

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Elsewhere, Beard has popped up on The Weakest Link, Big Brother Late and Live, The Traitors Uncloaked, as well as having a cameo part in Hollyoaks. They also find the time to host The Gossip Gays, a podcast taking a look at the week’s news and gossip, as well as BBC Sounds’ podcast Danny Beard On Same Sex Love and Marriage and Radio 1’s Beginner's Guide to Eurovision.

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They were also a semi-finalist on Britain’s Got Talent, but it’s on RuPaul’s Drag Race that Beard truly punched into the public consciousness. There’s some modesty about the win though. “If you go in there with a gameplan, or trying to be anything other than yourself, it just doesn’t work. You see that with some of the people who either crumble under the pressure or don’t connect with the audience at home. I just went in there to be me.” There’s an admission that they didn’t initially think there was any chance of winning the show, in what was a golden season. But, about halfway through, it started dawning there might be a slim chance of seizing the crown. “It was the most transformative experience… getting that validation from RuPaul. They’re the world’s biggest drag queen. It’s like wanting to be a pop star and Madonna spending four weeks with you, telling you how you can be better. You are going to need a ‘wet floor’ sign. I’m forever grateful. Everyone there, from the crew and producers to the people who look after you, they all make sure you can just go there and be yourself. And I didn’t have to wash my own clothes or cook for a month. I just got to show off, it was amazing!” they say with a chuckle.

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In performance terms, their new tour has brought Beard full circle. “I’ve just come out of a couple of day’s rehearsal with the band for this tour. On the last morning, I was just throwing stuff at them. And they just created it all in front of me. That’s a skill I don’t have. To be able to have that support added into my show just makes the end product better. What I’ve created is something I would want to go and see. I think this is going to be the best show I’ve ever done. So, I do want people to see it. Maybe I’ll shit myself the week before and regret telling everyone to come... But we’re finishing in the West End, so it’ll be my debut there. It feels so magical to be able to say that.”

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They describe the creative process for Straight Expectations as being hugely enjoyable from start to finish. Beard performed with their own band for the first time at last year’s Edinburgh season and didn’t really know how audiences would react. “I don’t know what I expected… I just wanted to have a good time. Reviewers said it was one of the shows of the year, and we got five stars and all this amazing stuff around it. So, we’re piggybacking off that, taking something good and trying to make it better. I think we have.”

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The fun part of their new fame is not knowing where it might take them. “I was offered a musical last year, which I couldn’t take because of my schedule. But I’d love to do musicals and theatre. I want to present more. Radio 1 recently came into my life, which took me in another direction. I feel like such a dick when I say it, I feel so lucky to be able to do just one of those things. Who knows what’s round the corner...? As long as I’m working, having a good time, and people around me are having a good time, that’s what matters to me right now. There’s so many artists out there who can't live off their art.”

After Drag Race, they’re not as shy about putting themselves forward - if you don’t ask, you don’t get. Beard has already had a full day of interviews and meetings. “I’ve just met with some TV, researched what they were doing and said: ‘I could present that’. Five years ago. I wouldn’t have done that. Sometimes, people don’t join the dots, unless you do it for them. If someone’s reading this now and wants to do drag; go and buy that fucking wig! If you want to do music, go and buy a guitar. You just got to do it and put yourself out there. I think the universe has a little helping hand if it’s meant to be.”

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It's undeniable that drag is now part of the entertainment mainstream. But Beard thinks it can go even further. There’s still plenty of people who overlook the form or subconsciously pigeonhole it. “The one thing I’m not is a female impersonator. Many people think that’s what drag is. I’m more of a clown. It’s an armour - a thing we put on to do what we want to do. For me, that is performing, presenting, singing and doing stand-up. For others, that might be selling products online, or doing make-up tutorials. That power of drag is what it enables you to be. As RuPaul says, you’re born naked, and the rest is drag. When you go to work, you put on elements of yourself that you aren’t doing at home. It’s just that some people dress up fabulously and show off as their job.

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“The best course for drag is to fucking do it. I won Drag Idol UK and got to gig from Brighton to Scotland. That was it. I was suddenly a cabaret drag act, when I wasn’t really before…” They say there have still been those tough shows. Nobody can always be the best version of yourself. We’re only human. “I cut my teeth over those years. People think you go on Drag Race and become an overnight success, but I’d spent more than a decade doing shows. It’d been a long time in the making. I’d just never had the opportunity, team or platform to do it on this scale. I feel so lucky. I get to say: ‘Hey! I’m going to work today.  And it’s in London’s Peacock Theatre, with a five-piece band. " Five years ago, I would have said that’s what it looks like to make it.”

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Danny Beard’s Straight Expectations comes to Brighton’s Komedia on Thurs 19 Sept.     

www.komedia.co.uk

www.socomedy.co.uk/artist/danny-beard 

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