PROM (DRAG) QUEEN
RIOTOUS MUSICAL FOLLOWS TEENAGER’S STRUGGLE AGAINST HOMOPHOBIA TO ATTEND HIS PROM AS HIS TRUE SELF
LIFE’S a drag, in the best possible sense, in Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, a defiantly feel-fabulous film version of the awardwinning coming-of-age musical.
Theatre director Jonathan Butterell makes his feature film debut with a faithful stage-to-screen adaptation, expanding the rousing song and dance numbers beyond the classrooms and hallways of a secondary school in Sheffield to follow the out and proud 16-year-old hero as he chases a dream of attending the end-of-year prom as his authentic self, in heels and a dress.
Jenny Popplewell’s celebrated 2011 TV documentary Jamie: Drag Queen At 16 provides the narrative framework (footage of the real Jamie and his mother festoons the end credits) which Tom MacRae’s script embroiders with energetically choreographed dream sequences and wrenching ballads from the heart.
“This story really happened... then we added the singing and dancing,” cheekily declares the film. Jamie New (Max Harwood) celebrates his 16th birthday with a gift of glittery red heels from his supportive mother, Margaret (Sarah Lancashire).
Classmate Dean Paxton (Samuel Bottomley) bullies Jamie but he deflects barbs flanked by best friend Pritti Pasha (Lauren Patel) and escapes into song-and-dance fantasies.
Careers adviser Miss Hedge (Sharon Horgan) laments Jamie’s life goal of performing on stage. Unfazed, he recruits Hugo Battersby (Richard E Grant) aka drag doyenne Loco Chanelle as his mentor. Jamie’s rise to stilettoed greatness is hampered by self-doubt and shame, sown by his homophobic father (Ralph Ineson). With music courtesy of Dan Gillespie Sells from The Feeling, the songs resonate in widescreen including The Wall In My Head, Don’t Even Know It and He’s My Boy, a ballad about a mum’s unconditional love, which Sarah Lancashire delivers with emotional punch.
A new song, This Was Me, performed largely by Holly Johnson, lead singer of Frankie Goes To Hollywood, is a deeply moving memento mori to beautiful creatures lost to Aids. Powered by Harwood’s performance, Everybody’s Talking About Jamie is almost two hours of unabashed pure joy, which preaches self-love with the same intensity as The Adventures Of Priscilla, Queen Of The Desert.
There are dramatic lulls before Jamie’s big reveal but Butterell know how to get toes tapping. People will be talking, glowingly, about his Jamie.
In selected cinemas and on Amazon Prime Video on Friday