Spankie Jackzon’s debuted her solo show Just The Tip for the first time on NZ soil to open Palmy Drag Fest… and kicked it in the d**k!
We are sat next to Spankie’s parents for her homecoming show. During our cover interview for our August issue, Spankie revealed that her parents had not seen the show and she had not allowed them to read the script. Yet as she opened with a rousing rendition of Robbie Williams’ ‘Let Me Entertain You’ her dad is already singing along.
You can feel the love in the room for the hometown queen as Spankie delivers a monologue on her life leading up to her casting on House Of Drag, the precusor to Drag Race Down Under (both of which she won).
Spankie’s talent and professionalism feel unparalleled in NZ drag, as she flawlessly ad-libs and interacts with the audience, before returning to her story effortlessly without the need for cue cards, prompts or autocue.
It is laugh-out-loud funny, then heartbreaking and just when you need a break to wipe the tears from your eyes, she bursts into song – live vocals only!
We hear ‘Bad To The Bone’, ‘Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me’ and Spankie’s original track ‘Motherf***er In The House’ and while her live vocals match up with some of the world’s best singing drag queens – they are not the moments that make this show so special.
What does is Spankie’s hilarious, warm, relatable and down-to-earth sense of humour. It shines through even when she is talking about the years of bullying she endured at school.
One particular story hit me right in the feels and still hasn’t let go. Spankie describes a parents’ evening at school in his teens, where a bully calls him a faggot and hopes he will die, in earshot of his furious parents. Spankie describes begging his dad to leave it but as he and his mum head for the exit – they turn around to see his dad making a beeline back to this boy, lifting him by the scruff of the neck and telling him he will punch him in the face if he ever hears him say something like that again. As an audience member you can’t help being engrossed and deeply saddened by the sense of shame and humiliation Spankie must have felt, as his parents realsied that this is what his school days were like, (he points out that with just a few exceptions most of his teachers were no better) and when his parents forcefully stand up for him, you couldn’t feel happier for him, or more proud of his mum and dad!
Another fascinating aspect of the show is Spankie talking in detail about learning to be a drag queen before the age of social media. She describes meeting her quick-witted drag-mother Amanda LaWhore, who teaches her about every aspect of drag. “Drag had to be passed down,” explains Spankie – highlighting that Amanda commanded respect and taught her what it meant to be tough in a potentially unwelcoming world. The bond between the two is palpable as Amanda sits, pride of place, on the other side of Spankie’s parents.
As her story reaches the years that Spankie’s lived in Melbourne (the city where she perfected her drag) she offers the audience a choice of hearing one of three stories: “The Time I Nearly Died’, ‘The Tram’ or ‘The Bean Bag Cleaner’. Luckily for us, she ends up telling all three – each as funny as the next.
It’s not often you see a show that lasts over an hour and think I wish that had been twice as long. Forget House Of Drag, Drag Race Down Under and Celebrity Treasure Island – this is the show that cements Spankie Jackzon as NZ drag’s biggest star… and this is ‘just the tip’ of her career!