Growing up in a town that feels like living on a movie set, the access to spectacle of the highest order certainly finds its way into your bones – from Hot Ice, to Funny Girls and the Blackpool Tower Circus, where the ring goes down and floods with 42,000 gallons of water – I’ve always loved entertainment. Some of my very first jobs were on Blackpool Promenade: performing on a ghost train for four years, dressing in a mascot costume and being rugby tackled by stag and hen parties on the illustrious Golden Mile.
There was an amazing scene on the doorstep, too, nights out that I’ll never forget, queens who knew how to party, and certainly taught me well. I’ll never forget the Liza tribute act who produced a bag of sherbert (ahem) and sat me down in front of Liza Minnelli’s appearance on The Muppet Show—I was 18. Experiences like this opened up my world. What I burst into was a life lived loud, proud and vividly from the word go. Being invited to perform in high-end cabarets came next – dance, drag, and clowning have always been within my wheelhouse – and I toured the world bringing my seaside sparkle to whichever show I was in. After I took my debut show to the Edinburgh Fringe in 2019, I knew that for my next show, I wanted to make something about my hometown.
The phrase “an end of the pier show at the end of the world” has kept coming to me as something to explore while looking around and trying to make sense of what the future might look like for us all. Coastal communities are way more vulnerable to the effects of climate change, and North Pier has been on the risk register since 2014. These things felt like interesting starting points to build a piece of work from. Would people still be putting on shows in these potentially dangerous contexts? What would the show look and feel like? Can we keep the outside world out, or does it seep in like all these things that we can’t ignore? Escapism versus reality through a glamorous lens of show business.
I’m thrilled to be joined on stage by three brilliant performers who are either from the town or nourished by Blackpool’s salty sea air: Miss Titty Kaka, who started her career at Funny Girls when she was just 18 years old, and Aysh De Belle and Sam De Belle, a married dancing duo from Blackpool whose work has been on stage and screen (they run a brilliant dance organisation and are also landladies). Often underrepresented in culture, Blackpool is bursting at the seams with LGBTQ+ talent, and it’s inspiring to be making the show with these wonders. Through researching the town’s history and sharing our stories, we’re trying to capture the quintessential essence of Blackpool through the work we’ve been developing and what we’re putting on stage.
SO… If you pop all of that in a blender and bedazzle it, you have our show. It’s camp, it’s fun, it’s weird (in a wild night out on the town kinda way), it’s entertaining. A bit like stepping into a time machine and feeling the history of Blackpool, while also imagining a future that hasn’t yet come to pass. Escapism for sixty minutes. Cultural archaeology through the medium of cabaret. Because if there’s one thing we, and Blackpool, know how to do… It’s put on a show and give you a damn good time.
Mr Blackpool’s Seaside Spectacular comes to Northern Stage Newcastle (6 November, 7.30pm), Southbank Centre London (as part of KUNSTY, 8 November, 9.30pm and 11.30pm) and Unity Theatre Liverpool (as part of Homotopia, 14 November, 7:30pm)
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