The passing of the crown: the 30th anniversary revival of The Edmonton Queen, a Fringe review

The Edmonton Queen (Stage 31, Nancy Power Theatre at the Roxy)

By Liz Nicholls, .ca

“Every once in a while a queen in born. Whether through osmosis or immaculate misconception is still mostly a mystery….”

At 19, a gay kid from hard-ass small-town Alberta got on the Greyhound, and left for the Big City. By the time Darrin Hagen got to Edmonton, his life had changed forever. And there was no going back.

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That’s the story of magical prairie transformation, his own, and his adoption by an ultra-glamorous chosen family of insomniac dazzlers in gowns who wore feathers and sequins, and “more foam than the Muppets.” And 30 years ago, Hagen, playwright/actor/director/queer historian/ composer/ musician/ drag queen extraordinaire, spun his funny, raunchy, nostalgia-soaked memoir of that time (the ‘80s), that place (“Flashback, the fag bar not the theatrical device”), those generations of queens (Lulu laRude and her descendants) into his first play.

The Edmonton Queen, happening in an anniversary Guys in Disguise production at the Roxy, is a backstage pass to that exotic, histrionic  demi-monde. And since you don’t even think about doing Hamlet without a Hamlet for gawd’s sake, the show has found its new star: drag artist Zachary Parsons-Lozinsky, a deluxe comic performance in the role Hagen originally wrote for and of himself, the kid who leaves Rocky Mountain House and becomes … a queen among queens. The production, incidentally, coincides with NeWest Press’s release of The Crown Collection, a trio of Hagen plays including The Empress & The Prime Minister and With Bells On.

In The Edmonton Queen we learn about the incredibly baroque royal hierarchy  — aspirants, dowagers, princesses, inheritances, christenings, assorted coronations — in the queendom. When our heroine recounts the deathly struggle over a pair of sparkly palazzo pants, Richard III seems pretty laid back in comparison. Parsons-Lozinski delivers the incantation: “Lulu LaRude begat Gloria Hole (that’s Hagen) begat Tallulah begat Ora Fice begat Mandy Kamp….” And so, an iconic role (and possibly the size 14 stilettos) has been bequeathed.

Funny, and dexterous with asides and winks and interpolations, the performer is at home in the sassy Hagen sense of humour. The challenge is to give elaborate, eloquent writing, the lush profane poetry of it, life onstage, so it’s actually spoken as if it’s happening live and doesn’t feel like narration. And Parsons-Lozinski shines brightly.

The Edmonton Queen is a groundbreaker with a place in Edmonton’s cultural history, And the heartbreaking catalogue of mortality that’s part of this story, a whole generation of artists gone before they were 30, is an elegy to an era.