While most of Ottawa was tucked into bed, the Capital Pride Festival experienced a whole different type of tucking Saturday night at the RuPaul’s Drag Race Battle of the Seasons.
Tightly tucked—a term used to describe the method of hiding that one unfeminine appendage—frocked, and painted with more primer than a Benjamin Moore’s stock room, six drag queens from the reality TV show RuPaul’s Drag Race mooned, insulted, and, when the mood struck, sang their way into the main stage crowd’s hearts at Ottawa City Hall.
Boasting a variety of drag, the evening brought together six of the most foul-mouthed and entertaining queens from various seasons of the popular LOGO TV show. Hosted by supermodel of the world, RuPaul Charles, Drag Race pits a number of America’s drag queens against each other in a battle royale of lip-synching, sewing, acting, singing, model challenges, and more.
The evening’s lineup included season two’s Pandora Boxx, season three’s Manila Luzon, Jiggly Caliente Brooks of season four, Alaska Thunderfuck 5000 of season five, season six’s Darienne Lake, and current crowned queen Bianca Del Rio. At the head of the show was RuPaul’s longtime pal, former pop star, and honorary drag queen Michelle Visage.
While Ottawa has had many run-ins with queens of the show, this main stage event offered a higher level of organization and production than any of the previous festivals.
Where a solo performance might offer just one or two songs, the roughly two-hour show had the queens on stage multiple times throughout the night. Many of the queens took full advantage of this by performing both popular song covers as well as their own material. Luzon’s lip-synch of “Glitter and Be Gay” allowed her to demonstrate her signature cross-eyed and frenetic style while bringing a touch of class and Broadway to the night. And, taking a page from RuPaul herself, Luzon sang about buying her t-shirts and managed to hock a dozen of them during the performance.
The number of performers even allowed for costume changes, most notably Boxx’s promiscuous Hermione corset worn while lip-syncing to popular songs about magic interspersed with dialogue from the Harry Potter films.
Despite the size of the crowd the show felt as intimate as any drag show at a hole in the wall club.
Dubbed the “human rolodex of hate,” Del Rio made sure to hit almost every group in the alphabet soup spectrum in her short time on stage. Security was immediately requested to remove heterosexual audience members, Home Depot jokes were thrown at the lesbians, and every gay boy there was “queenier” than the painted clown in a dress throwing insults at the crowd.
Thunderfuck 5000 almost stole the show with her death-metal rendition of “Wrecking Ball” where she attempted to deep-throat her mic. She also brought what has become a groan-worthy signature cape from Drag Race that was sure to make eyes roll and put a smile on more than a few faces.
However, anyone in the audience, even the gay men, can agree that the real show stealer was exactly what Visage said they had convened for: “a celebration of [her] tits.”
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