A good flirt

The door prize upstairs at the Midnight Shift on Sundays is a little offbeat: the winner is handed a clipboard and given a cameo role in the latest instalment of the drag show. As Dallas Dellaforce said last Sunday, it’s a little bit theatresports (but a bit less heterosexual).

The show is part of Flirt, the newest addition to the Sunday night scene, and stars three very newcomers: Dallas Dellaforce, Versace Ciccone and Della Deluxe. Dallas Dellaforce is the creator and writer and looks eerily familiar, until placed as that guy that works at Sax Leather. Versace Ciccone is ribbon-thin and startled the DIVAs crowd in albino drag. Della Deluxe is, ahem, big-boned, with a reference to the late Divine during the show acknowledging the scene’s long-time love affair with our hefty sisters (from Mama Cass to the fictional Tracey Turnblad).

Daniel (a.k.a. Dellaforce) put the whole shebang together in two weeks -“ after appearing on the drag scene only in the last year. He left behind his job at Sax to do drag full-time, but it’s a genre shift he feels isn’t too dramatic.

I’d never consider myself a leather man, as much as I’d never actually consider myself a Robo-drag queen, Daniel said. I’m on the fringe of all of that I think -¦

It’s funny because I never wanted to be a performing drag queen, it was just something that happened. I’ve been going out a lot over the last couple of years as a social drag queen and it was more through other people’s -¦ insistence that I started working. And it happened that I found that it was really quite fun-¦ It’s also a great chance to express yourself and be paid for that as well, he said. Daniel began only this year working with best friend and drag king Sexy Galexy.

The show concerns Dallas and her best friend Versace as showgirls, who are visited by Dallas’s officious mother Della Deluxe and Dallas’s boyfriend (some poor sucker from the audience). In the middle, guest star Joyce Maynge does a Riverdance -“ for no apparent reason. The songlist is 1940s (think Gentlemen Prefer Blondes) and the storylines screwball, with plenty of inspiration from the box.

I’ve always wanted to do a kind of 1950s-style sitcom, based on the I Love Lucy, Bewitched, I Dream Of Jeannie style of television show -¦ Daniel said. The thing about this show is it’s going to be ever-evolving -¦ new episodes will be starting every six to eight weeks. The older show will move to earlier in the evening and the new show will be later on in the evening and the possibilities for plots are endless.

Daniel’s full of ideas and enthusiasm and can’t quite believe he’s on the way up the drag ladder. Winning the Rising Star award at the DIVAs this year was, he says, quite the affirmation.

I really didn’t expect to win it, mainly because the day of the thing I came to the realisation that none of my friends who said they were going to go and vote for me actually did. And it’s a public voting thing so I thought, oh well, there goes that!

The drag performance is only part of the night of course, with DJs Garry Tee and Kate Monroe providing fun, lounge-ish beats. Promotions manager Daniel Deephouse wanted a back-to-basics approach to the evening, simply providing really good house music.

Any hints from Dallas on the next instalment? Stella breaks her ankle so she has to go to hospital. The two girls can’t get in because it’s after visiting hours so they get dressed up as nurses, and they end up having to operate on someone. Probably the audience member.

Flirt is held every Sunday night from 9pm at the Midnight Shift Club, 85 Oxford Street, Darlinghurst.