Rusical

RuPaul’s Drag Race UK vs. The World Season 2, Episode 5 – Seven!: The Rusical Power Rankings

March 9, 2024 by krisis

I’m back with more coverage of the Drag Olympics of Drag Race! RuPaul’s Drag Race UK vs. The World Season 2 Episode 5 – Seven!: The Rusical, a live-singing blend of Rusical and Girl Groups challenges with a “When I Glow Up” redemption runway of past looks.

Seven!: The Rusical is a direct lift from SIX, a rock/pop opera musical staged like a concert delivered by the six wives of Henry VIII – two of whom we met last week in Snatch Game! The Drag Race version of the musical is slightly less rangy in pop styles, mostly coming off like five subtle remixes of “Express Yourself” with a pair of unusual outliers rather than seven distinct songs from different music genres.

Much like “Drag Race World” in Episode 3, I think this episode (and the queens) suffered from poor production choices in what could have been an all-time great episode given their level of talent.

This Rusical was subtitled, “Confessions of a Drag Queen,” but Ru never fully defined what those confessions ought to be. In the original SIX, each queen confesses the story of her own love affair via a catchy pop tune. Each song could be effortlessly excerpted to radio without revealing it originated in a musical. Here, all of the queens merely confessed the stories of their runs on the show, trending towards tepid lyrics in the category of “look at me, I sashayed away, I’m gonna snatch the crown!” Only one queen (La Grande Dame) fully broke out of this model to deliver a verse entirely about herself.

Beyond the lack of direction for the songwriting, there was also a lackluster “vocal coaching” session with pop artist Self Esteem. After seeing some truly brilliant singing and songwriting advice on the recent Canada’s Drag Race Season 4, Self Esteem was a real letdown as a coach.

On Canada, the performance coaches treated the songs seriously – as if they were responsible for making improvements to a song that would really be released to radio with their names on it. They edited lyrics, revised melodies, and coached queens on delivery and support. By contrast, Self Esteem left the queens stuck with some easily-fixable problems… and for at least one queen she made her verse worse.

I’m not sure if Self Esteem was too starstruck by being on the show or if she simply isn’t a very talented songwriter, but she failed these queens. (Her lip sync track would suggest the latter.)

Finally, there was the failure of the choreography – or, lack thereof. I know next week is a full-on dancing challenge, so it didn’t make sense to have this challenge also hinge on learning professional choreography. Yet, a Rusical without choreography just doesn’t hit the same – especially on the same day we got an American franchise episode choreographed by Jamal Sims. (More on that tomorrow!) That’s what made this more of a Girl Groups challenge than a Rusical despite the title – the choreo was mostly walking and pointing.

I’ll make my own confession: I’m fully annoyed to be delivering this week’s Power Rankings, with a newly-solidified Top 4 compared to last week’s Snatch Game Power Ranking. This episode made clear that one queen who is crushing the season isn’t in true contention for the crown, while another queen delivering barely-adequate performances is Ru’s chosen one. Meanwhile, the three queens between them continue to deliver terrific performances each week.

(Want to watch RuPaul’s Drag Race UK vs. The World outside of the UK? For most of the world, it’s available with a Wow Presents Plus subscription as soon as the episode is done airing.)

Readers, start your engines. And, may the best international drag superstar win!

RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 16, Episode 7 – The Sound of Rusic Rusical Power Rankings

February 18, 2024 by krisis

RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 16, Episode 7 was our annual Rusical! “The Sound of Rusic” recast familiar tropes from The Sound of Music as a pop music musical set in a high stakes pageant in a remote town.

It was paired with a “I Can Buy Myself Flowers” runway themed to match the lip sync tune “Flowers,” Miley Cyrus’s recent Grammy-winner for Record of the Year

We’re at a point in the evolution of Drag Race where not only every contestant comes ready to smash the Rusical, but the show itself has a vested interest in the Rusical looking amazing. Even though this was unseen to us, it’s a virtual guarantee that the queens had an extra 1-2 days to rehearse this show “off camera” between when we saw them go home on Day 1 and when they hit the runway on “Day 2.”

As with “Wigloose” last year, that resulted in a musical with no obvious worst performance, unless we’re going to get nitpicky about a wardrobe malfunction. That means we do have to get nitpicky, not only about that, but about whether people looked alive behind the eyes or made the most out of their little bits of business.

That lead to a cutthroat and somewhat hard to predict set of bottom queens. However, it was the runway that confirmed our top queens, as three of our drag artists had the objective best looks of the night (and a fourth queen’s fashionable runway may have saved her from the bottom).

What does that mean for our Power Rankings compared to last week’s “Welcome to the DollHouse”? One queen fights her way back into the Top 3 while another queen falls out of the Top 4 for the first time, and the four queens marooned outside of the Top 5 are going to have to get serious about their game theory to see if they can last long enough to play spoiler against a frontrunner.

Readers, start your engines. And, may the best drag queen win!

RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 15, Episode 12 – “Wigloose The Rusical” Review & Power Ranking

March 18, 2023 by krisis

Welcome to my review, recap, and power rankings of the twelfth episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 15 – “Wigloose The Rusical.” It’s a winking drag lip sync parody of Footloose that arrived at the perfect time, plus an “Everybody Say Glove” runway theme.

Drag Race couldn’t have gotten the timing of the release of this episode any better if they had consulted a crystal ball. This Rusical about outlawing drag comes just as many states in America are passing anti-drag bills that cast drag queens as inherently predatory and indecent.

Of course, the idea that drag is inherently adult or sexual is absolutely ludicrous. Drag and blurring the lines of gender has always been a staple of entertainment for all ages, whether that’s in Mrs. Doubtfire, Steven Universe, or William Shakespeare.

A drag queen reading a storybook to children is truly no different than the reading coming from someone dressed as a Disney Princess. Both are forms of exaggerated femininity, and it’s up to each parent to decide when that’s appropriate for their children.

Really, these bills are a simply an old tactic brought back to life in the ongoing war on transgender Americans and all LGBTQA* people waged by hate-filled Republicans.

Legislating against drag is often synonymous with restricting all forms of presenting yourself in a gender non-conforming way. It tries to enforce gender norms with threat of public shaming, felony charges, court costs, and even jail time.

It’s important as part of this conversation to state clearly that doing drag is not synonymous with being trans. Trans women are women dressing as themselves – they are not doing drag. Not all drag queens are trans women, and not all trans women have done drag. However, if it is illegal to perform in drag, does that also make it illegal for a trans person to perform as themselves? If it is criminal for a drag queen to be seen by children, does that also mean it’s criminal for a transgender person to be seen by children?

Republicans are interested in blurring those lines if it means they can harm more queer people and erase them from being visible in every day life.

If I grew up under one of these drag bans, I would not have been able to dress androgynously in high school. I would not have been able to give one of my first performances in a theatre, which was in drag as Jackie O. And, in the present day, I would be at risk of being charged with a felony as someone who sometimes drives my car while wearing long hair, make-up, and high-heeled boots just because that’s how I like to look.

Of course, these laws are not all about me – and, I don’t even live in America anymore! However, I use myself as an example to show the kind of intentional side effects that come with these laws.

No anti-drag law is truly about keeping drag confined to night clubs or removing children from risky situations. They are about trying to enforce gender norms in all walks of life, which has the side effect of criminalizing being visibly trans or queer.

I often struggle with whether I should be writing about drag on Crushing Krisis. Do people who like comic books want to see these posts? Should I be writing them as someone who is not a drag queen and is not active in a queer subculture? Is it somehow embarrassing or inappropriate for me to be writing about drag as a business professional? What would my clients think?

These laws and their accompanying discrimination is why I write about drag. Drag deserves to be visible. Drag is for everyone. Drag is art just like comics are art. Drag artists deserve essays and analysis written about them just like artists who create comic books, movies, music, and other forms of popular and fine art.

Drag isn’t going away and neither are LGBTQA* people. It’s important for everyone who can safely do so to show their support and resistance to the advance of hate in the world in any way they are able. It felt good to see my favorite television show make its own silly statement about it in a week where any form of queer joy is welcome.

(It didn’t hurt that it may have been their best Rusical of all time.)

This highly-enjoyable, highly-relevant episode of Drag Race slightly shuffled the rankings compared to last week’s comedy challenge. However, it mostly confirmed what we’ve known all along to be our top four, with one very lovely, very loose fourth-runner up.

Readers, start your engines. And, may the best drag queen win!

Drag Race Philippines Season 1 Episode 4 – OPM Divas: The Rusical, Review & Power Ranking

September 1, 2022 by krisis

Mabuhay! Welcome to my review and power rankings of the fourth episode of Drag Race Philippines Season 1 – “OPM Divas: The Rusical.” This is a lip sync Rusical where each queen needs to impersonate an iconic Philippines pop star by lip syncing to nursery rhymes performed in their signature style.

OPM refers to “Original Pilipino Music” – a particular style of Filipino post-1970s pop songs heavy on soulful balladry. This is one of those times where no amount of YouTube research can adequately prepare me to fairly judge the results of a Drag Race challenge from an international edition of the show.

I tried my best to find comparable looks and performances from all of the OPM Divas to better appreciate the impersonations, but some of these Divas have been around for decades – long enough that we could have a whole Rusical dedicated solo to them the way we have had for Cher and Madonna on the US franchise.

Even this mini-challenge was completely new to me! It was a game of “Ten-Twenty Talon Becky,” a reverse-limbo street game of hopping, leaping, and eventually cartwheeling over a Chinese garter. (A “Chinese garter,” is simply a rubberized elastic band you can use for stretching and/or jumping rope.) I couldn’t imagine how the queens were going to make it over the belt once it got up to eyeball-level – and that’s where the cartwheels came in! If you get even a toe over the rubbery line, your momentum and its elasticity takes care of the rest.

The mini-challenges this season have showed off how good-natured and downright silly this cast can be, which is easily obscured by how seriously they all take their runway assignments. I cannot think of another season of any franchise where an entire cast of queens have been so gamely foolish for physical challenge like the pole-climbing and the Chinese garter.

The willingness to be awkward on camera feels unique to the Philippines cast, but it also helps that the mini-challenges are rooted in their culture and their sense of childhood play. Compare that to the typical US mini-challenges, which tend to be either games that Ru (a man in her 60s) finds personally entertaining or full of sexual innuendo (if not both).

This episode also showed that the Philippines franchise is not above outright riggory to create drama in critiques.

As I understand it, every queen had advance knowledge of two Divas they might impersonate, but they didn’t have a say in the final choice or in the style of song and how it would be choreographed. Many Filipino Divas are known for being Celine-Dion-adjacent balladeers, which gave some queens less to work with than others.

Minty Fresh, in particular, felt stuck with a performance that could only accentuate the “Wake Up, Pearl!” narrative that she’s been saddled with. Similarly, Lady Morgana landed the most world-famous of all the Divas, but that Diva is such a chameleon that Morgana couldn’t possibly capture her within 45 seconds of impersonation.

Finally, there were some queens who were protected from critiques to yield the elimination the show wanted tonight, which might not have been 100% warranted based on the episode but which made sense in the arc of the season.

Did all that riggory that wreak major havoc on my Power Rankings compared to Episode Three? Read on to find out!

If you want to watch Drag Race Philippines outside of the Philippines and Canada you can sign up for WowPresentsPlus to watch the many worldwide Drag Race franchises for $4.99 a month or $50 a year. (Note that if you’re in the home country of a franchise you will need to use a VPN to “visit” another country to see that content.)

Readers, start your engines! And, may the best Filipino drag queen win! [Read more…] about Drag Race Philippines Season 1 Episode 4 – OPM Divas: The Rusical, Review & Power Ranking

Canada’s Drag Race Season 3 Episode 7 – Squirrels Trip: The Rusical, Review & Power Ranking

August 27, 2022 by krisis

Welcome to my review and power rankings of the seventh episode of Canada’s Drag Race Season 3 – Squirrels Trip: The Rusical, a live one-act musical that required each queen to pre-record her vocals but act, dance, and lip sync live on stage.

Canada’s Drag Race has a reputation for bringing out the best versions of all the standard Drag Race challenges, and “Squirrels Trip: The Rusical” was no exception!

I think this Rusical even managed to top last year’s spectacular “Under the Big Top“ all-clown musical, because this year’s challenge had a narrative and played out like a real show rather than a series of single-character vignettes.

This was the sort of magical mid-season Drag Race episode where no queen truly did badly. This is a cast of six highly-capable queens who have the chops to entertain in almost any kind of challenge. There was an obvious bottom two, but both queens were fun to watch in the Rusical – and one of them delivered surprisingly great musical theatre vocals!

This week’s rankings got a solid shake-up from last week, with a new queen on the top of rank. Do you agree with my assessments heading into next week’s challenge, or would you rank them in a different order? Comment below to let me know your thoughts.

If you want to watch Canada’s Drag Race Season 3 outside of Canada and the UK you can sign up for WowPresentsPlus to watch the many worldwide Drag Race franchises for $4.99 a month or $50 a year. (Note that if you’re in the US you will need to use a VPN to “visit” another country to see the US Franchise.)

Readers, start your engines! And, may the best Queen (of the North) win!