By Holli Harms
Lady Bunny is a drag legend.
She is showing off all her legendary grandness at The Green Room 42 in her production Don’t Bring The Kids.
She is a bawdy, raunchy tour-de-force combining singing, comedy, dancing, videos, and lip-syncing to create an evening that is a, “Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy night” kind of show. Lady Bunny lays down the law, takes no hostages, and leads the audience on a speed-lightning adventure.
In her own way, she is showing and telling the life of a woman and her body. A body that is expected to do so much and be so much. A body that is ever-changing and not always for the better or the easier.
She does all of this by taking us on a high-speed chariot ride of popular songs and pop culture references overlaid and colored with her particular brand of humor that is only Lady Bunny, verbalizing many of those naughty thoughts we dare not give audible life to and pulling us all in with her outrageous humor, sexual innuendos, and outright vulgarity.
She re-imagines Cardi B and Megan’s WAP to another level. I was not familiar with their song but my wonderful date CarolAnne was and she assured me that Lady Bunny’s version in her first costume change of the evening ( a costume that grows and transitions with the flip of a nail) and her antics were taking the song on a 180-degree insane journey exposing the original’s premise. WAP a huge hit is speaking about women’s sexual desires, that we have them and they are just as important to us as they are to the male species. The song specifically addresses our reproductive system and its tricks of the trade with lyrics like “Bring a mop and bucket!” Yes, I know! Wait until you see Lady Bunny’s version! And HER video that follows.
Lady Bunny’s videos are outrageously funny, they are Three Stooges meets Linda Lovelace meets Randy Rainbow. They are raunchy and clever and full of humor and the excessiveness of the human body, both male and female.
She ends her one-woman coup de maître with truth, although that is what she has been giving us the whole time, truth. She addresses the problem with a country that states one of the biggest dangers to our children and families – Drag Queen Story Hour. With all that is going on in our country and the world to focus on Drag Queen’s Reading to children, children who are having fun, as are their parents, children who are seeing with their own eyes that being your authentic self is important and wonderful, is pathetic, sad, and ridiculous.
I did not know what to expect when I got to The Green Room 42 and was surprised and lifted in the welcoming and confident hands of a true performer. I loved it.
The Green Room 42 is on the fourth floor of the Yotel Times Square. Also on the 4th floor is a wonderful outdoor space for dining and drinks so go early to a show and have a drink outside and enjoy the New York Skyline, or stay after and have a drink, and besides the skyline, you’ll still be languishing in the joy of an evening you just spent at The Green Room with artists like Lady Bunny who will have you thinking and reconsidering after the laughing and cheering have died down.
Lady Bunny (Don’t Bring The Kids) Performs every Tuesday in June at the Yotel.
YOTEL New York Times Square 570 10th Ave, New York, NY 10036
