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Death of a Drag Queen extracts fodder from fantasy, offering a glimpse behind the veil of a drag artist in her twilight era. The one-woman play directed by Portland playwright and filmmaker Sean Brown, and performed by Atlanta actor Sean Marlow, premiered Dec. 5 at the Echo Theater. After it closes this weekend, Death of a Drag Queen will move to Triangle Productions for a late January run.
Whether you make it out this weekend or not, this show is ultimately not to be missed wherever you can see it. An homage to Arther Miller’s classic Death of a Salesman, Drag Queen is tender, raw and perhaps the most existentially somber drag performance of the year to grace a local stage.
Miss Cram P. Brulee (Marlow) wakes bleeding with a scream and a hurl, breaking the fourth wall to address the audience she calls ghosts. With her Southern-Louisianan drawl, she explains how last night led her here, the morning of her 60th birthday. We are presumed to be dead, but is she?
The entire play is functionally a quick tempo ADHD soliloquy, not entirely unlike how some Portland nightlife legends have preached late at night on Instagram Live. Reminiscent of the drunken musings of a lingering, last-called patron at a gay dive bar’s closing time, Brulee has much to say. Topics range from glitzy pageant reveries to hard-knock life lessons learned through poverty and discrimination, to fixating on Jared Leto’s singular wrinkle. She assures the ghosts that her friends are coming to take her to birthday brunch—scratch that, dinner, as the play progresses.
“Drag is art and art is subjective,” the namesake hosts say weekly on The Boulet Brothers’ Dragula. Brown’s unfiltered and upfront tone and style exposes the life of the party’s nonbedazzeled side, which proved too sombering for some during the Dec. 12 showing. Since Brulee can see us as ghosts, it means she can read us, too (a read is a sassier version of a roast, in case that term’s new to you). One audience member left after being read by Brulee, with another following shortly after.
Though Death of a Drag Queen is advertised as suitable for ages 16 and up, this didn’t sufficiently cover some of the show’s heaviest material. There’s no world where a show called Death of a Drag Queen is going to be light and easy, but a note highlighting suicide references could actually have come in handy. Though this night’s audience seemed mostly middle-aged adults, it was evident that not everyone knew what was in store.
Blending classic drag with advanced technology was a production highlight. Projected set backdrops enhanced Marlow’s performance. Something about the use of DALL-E-generated projected backdrops made Brulee’s line “The only thing you ever really own are your choices” a little longer. Most of Brown’s directorial decisions were effective—including reuniting with Marlow. The two worked together in 2018 and 2021 on the films Strictly Professional and Christmas Freak, respectively. Marlow held his own, engaging the audience for an 80-minute solo. That takes some serious chops. Costume design was whimsical, as Marlow played dress-up throughout his act.
What begins with an unsettling tone, slowly turns transfixing. The Crown Royal-swigging queen has some good life advice and stories to tell, making it all the more heartbreaking to see the cracks in her loosely held façade of glamor, realized by a water and electricity shutoff and her short-tempered outburst upon being stood up. She is flawed, she is vulnerable, and her alter ego has taken her as far as she feels she can go with dignity. Look around, you really don’t see that many queens in their 50s and 60s.
In the same way Willy Loman’s American dream collapsed, so did Brulee’s. Neither must be a hero to invoke compassion from audiences. Sometimes tragedy is ordinary, and sometimes that is too hard to bear.
SEE IT: Death of a Drag Queen at Echo Theater, 1515 SE 37th Ave., 971-267-3246, echotheaterpdx.org. 7:30 pm Friday and Saturday, Dec. 19 and 20. $25, 50% discount for guests dressed in drag. 16+.
