These drag queens haven’t a clue how banal their problems are: Sound of the Underground, at the Royal Court, reviewed

Sound of the Underground is a drag show involving a handful of cross-dressers who spend the opening 15 minutes telling us who they are. Then, rather ominously, they announce: ‘We’ve written a play.’ But they haven’t really. The scene shifts to a kitchen where the drag queens meet to discuss their pay and conditions, and the show turns into an advertisement for their woes.

Drag is facing a crisis, we hear, caused by its sudden popularity. Drag queens are in demand from TV bosses and corporate executives but the artistes feel dismayed and traduced by this surfeit of opportunity. They loathe RuPaul, a cross-dresser favoured by the BBC, and they blame him for betraying the true spirit of drag, whatever that may be. One of them calls RuPaul ‘exclusionary’. They share an abiding contempt for their most loyal customers, female hen parties, whom they accuse of ‘loving bingo’ and ‘vomiting prosecco’. And though they seem good-natured, the drag queens haven’t a clue how banal their problems are. Anyone who turns a pastime into a career will notice a sharp diminution in its charm and spontaneity.

Money obsesses them. They moan about their £600 weekly wage from the Royal Court (more than a commercial producer would offer them), and they pass buckets around the stalls, begging for tips. No one warned them that scrounging from the audience will encourage the management to pay them less, not more. Some of their suggestions sound insane but are likely to materialise as the cult of diversity spreads. One of the queens wants the profession regulated by the state, like teaching or medicine. A black artiste cites ‘racial othering’ and proposes the creation of ‘our own spaces’. Apartheid, in other words. It’s not inconceivable that cross-dressing will become a nationalised industry with quotas imposed on the public sector.