Manchester’s mini yet mighty Hope Mill has secured another coup for Christmas. After last year’s European premiere of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella comes the world premiere of this musical based on the cult 1995 road movie To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar. It’s a fairytale too, of sorts, with script and direction by Douglas Carter Beane, who also wrote the film’s screenplay (and provided the book for Cinderella). There is even a triumvirate of fairy godmothers in the form of New York drag queens Vida, Noxeema and Chi Chi, whose Cadillac trip to Hollywood stalls in one-horse-town Snydersville, where these fabulous fish out of water upend the locals’ lives.
The film owed much to its against-type casting, with Patrick Swayze, Wesley Snipes and John Leguizamo all frocked up. Tonight, it’s a credit to the warm, nuanced performances of Peter Caulfield (statuesque Vida), Gregory Haney (shade-slinging Noxeema) and new graduate Pablo Gómez Jones (not-quite-ingenue Chi Chi) that those superstars are swiftly forgotten. There is a high-energy, empowering pop opener, Feel the Light, with the brilliant Theo Maddix presiding over a drag contest.
