Drag star Le Gateau Chocolat: 'As a Black drag queen, I'm political… even when I don't want to be'

At a turbulent time for the world, especially for the LGBTQ+ community, drag icon Le Gateau Chocolat wants his musicals-inspired new show to be a moment of “pure joy”.  

“I felt the need to offer something to both myself and audiences, to be distracted for an hour,” he says. “Can we just sit in a room and understand our shared humanity and laugh?” 

Gateau, who has performed across genres and styles, from drag and cabaret, to opera, Shakespeare, and children’s theatre, will be bringing his new show Musicals Mayhem to Soho over the festive season. The musicals-inspired show promises “an hour of high kicks, high drag and high glamour” from musical favourites including Frozen and the The Sound of Music. 

“Where we find ourselves politically at this point, with things that have happened in America, things that are happening here, things that are happening around the globe, sometimes I find myself in a state,” he tells the Big Issue, explaining that he had previously performed in a show called Black, a meditation on his experience with depression. 

“Musicals Mayhem is sort of antithesis, or a need to return, to embrace another elemental facet of my identity, which is being a clown,” he tells the Big Issue. 

“That’s not to say that when you go out there, it won’t still be winter, that Palestine and Israel and Lebanon won’t still be happening, that Congo won’t be happening… but can we laugh? Can we laugh?”

At Soho Theatre, where Gateau has performed a number of times and says feels like “returning home”, the plan for the new show is to “visit nostalgia, to reconnect with childhood music, hairbrush-holding, looking into the mirror, being the worst karaoke candidate in your shower”. 

“Because we need a little bit of levity,” Gateau explains. “Musicals Mayhem is an offering that is, I hope, joyful, joyous, distracting, as well as being nostalgic.”

“The invitation is to sing along – not all of the songs, not all of them! – only when you’re asked,” they laugh. 

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Gateau, who has performed as Feste in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, in opera productions, and in his children’s show Duckie – a reimagining of the classic children’s tale The Ugly Duckling, explains that as a Black drag queen, his work is often “extraordinarily political… even when I don’t want it to be”. 

“I did a show with a friend called Grey Arias, and one of the questions is, can I ever walk on stage and not be fat, Black, visibly queer first? And can she ever walk on stage and not be a woman?” he says.

“There is something about musical theatre that could, and sometimes does, transcend politics,” he says, going on to slam the racism both Halle Bailey and Cynthia Erivo faced after being cast in The Little Mermaid and Wicked respectively. 

“Even in this genre, you try to not be political, but some people won’t let it go!” Gateau says, adding that some musical theatre songs, “allow us to forget labels, even if for a moment… with musical theatre, you can suspend belief and you can reach into your childhood and be led by nostalgia.”

He explains: “I hope that when you come to my show, you’re able to exhale for a minute, because the reality for some people is extraordinarily difficult, and so come and exhale, I think that’s the invitation with Musicals Mayhem… and there’s something that is really freeing about just embracing my inner clown.”

Gateau explains that continuing to perform as a drag queen, despite the art form coming under intense attacks in recent years, with several US states attempting to ban drag altogether, has become a form of “defiance”, adding that opposition to drag is “manufactured outrage”. 

Explaining that drag is a “sort of heightened identity, as you would see with Grace Jones, David Bowie, Lady Gaga, Beyoncé, Madonna, Prince”, Gateau says the art form allows him to “express myself however I feel”.

“I just don’t sit within the lines that they have drawn for what they think I should offer,” he explains. “That applies to me in drag. That applies to me when I’m out of drag, and I feel like just existing, in drag or out of drag, has become a form of defiance.”

Speaking on the several American states which have attempted to enact drag bans, Gateau explains that their “priorities are skewed”. 

“Before you come for drag queens, if you continue to have school shootings, Sandy Hook, Columbine… drag queens are not your problem,” he says, adding that “demagogic” leaders “want you to look at minorities or minority identities as a problem so that you don’t look at them”. 

“I think that they have to deal with more pressing and more important things before they cycle back to me,” he adds. 

Gateau, who last year won the Culture Award at the Attitude Awards, explains that the reason drag “continues to thrive across the globe” is because it allows for joy and laughter, while at the same time allowing the audience to connect with the artist on a very human level. 

“Laughing is an opening into heightened emotions,” he explains. “When you are heightened there’s also the opportunity for you to be open, and after the laugh, or through the laugh, you can see the messages that are important, which is, shared humanity.”

He continues: “After I’ve made you laugh, or if like in Black I’ve shown you that I too have suffered depression… while there might be an element of my lashes or the makeup that has brought you into this room… behind the makeup and the lashes and the poster… there’s a human being there.

“Musicals Mayhem will give you laughs and laughs and laughs… but in terms of my work as a drag artist, I traverse many issues, because drag gives me the vehicle and the platform to say things that other people who might not have the microphone couldn’t or can’t say. So, yes, the clown is available, but the human is never not always available.”

“That’s why this art form works for me, and that’s why this art form continues to thrive across the globe, that’s why it appeared in Shakespeare, that’s why it continues to appear in Panto,” he adds. “It’s a vehicle to deliver something. For me, is it vehicle to deliver joy, amongst education, politics, reality, love.”

Gateau explains that they have been performing drag since 2008, and will be continuing “for a while yet”.

“Where we find ourselves in the world today… there’s a little bit more to say,” he says.

Le Gateau Chocolat: Musicals Mayhem is at London, Soho Theatre, until 11 January. 

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