The holiday season arrives once a year, but the slay belles of RuPaul’s Drag Race Live! arrive five nights a week at their 9:30 performances inside the Flamingo Showroom. Current cast members Asia O’Hara, Derrick Barry, Eureka O’Hara, Jaida Essence Hall, Kameron Michaels, Kennedy Davenport, Latrice Royale, Naomi Smalls, Plastique Tiara and Vanessa “Vanjie” Mateo are the cream of the queens who have appeared in the RuPaul’s Drag Race franchise, and their participation in the live Vegas iteration demonstrates they have risen to the top.
The cast members of Drag Race Live! have fully embraced RuPaul’s ethos of “If you can’t love yourself, how the hell are you going to love someone else?” That self-caring love is cultivated through image and performance fully on display at the Flamingo Showroom. The Strip hasn’t played host to glam and spectacle on this level since the heyday of headdress-wearing showgirls.
A major difference is that the performers aren’t uniform in appearances or attitudes. The show itself is a live re-creation of RuPaul’s Drag Race, which completed its 14th season on VH-1. The show and its spinoffs feature the best drag queens in the land who compete in lip-syncing contests and participate in sketches such as a satire of classic game show Match Game. The best of the best stay to slay.
The most memorable performers have appeared in all-star sequels to the series. They consistently try to top themselves in terms of costuming, makeup creations and lip-syncing innovations. The most successful have become part of Drag Race Live!’s rotating cast, and each have their own fan base. That’s evident at the Flamingo, where fans scream out the names of their favorite drag racers when they aren’t swooning over the male-model Pit Crew dancers who help keep the show moving.
That may come in the form of a “condragulatory” chair dance for whoever gets the biggest rise on the applause meter. There are more dimensions to the show than audience-appreciation contests, though. The creative team working with RuPaul includes Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato, the partners behind films Party Monster and The Eyes of Tammy Faye. Choreographer/filmmaker Jamal Sims, a prime mover behind RuPaul’s Drag Race, co-directed the live show with RuPaul.
The result is off-the-hook dancing and dazzling couture in a showroom with a stage that looks like an illuminated cathedral of camp. The score was created by longtime RuPaul collaborator Leland and producer Tom Campbell, but the queens are very much their own creations. Although the COVID shutdown of the Strip interrupted RuPaul’s Drag Race Live! shortly after it opened, RuPaul’s people persevered and observed their 300th show in October.
It survived in part due to the cast and crew making lemonade out of pandemic lemons with the reality series RuPaul’s Drag Race Vegas Revue, which kept the cast visible when they couldn’t perform live. They own the stage now and have carved out a niche in Strip entertainment that from all appearances looks like it will be around for years to come.
Flamingo, 702.777.2782
Click here for your free subscription to the weekly digital edition of Las Vegas Magazine, your guide to everything to do, hear, see and experience in Southern Nevada. As part of your subscription, each week via email you will receive the latest edition of Las Vegas Magazine, full of informative content such as restaurants to visit, cocktails to sip and attractions to enjoy.
