Review – Hans: Like a German

I’ll be honest: I walked into this show with low expectations – any performance can obviously be hit or miss, but a drag cabaret has the potential to be so downright awkward that you’d pay double the ticket price just to disappear. And so I was more shocked than pleasantly surprised, when I walked out of the tent an hour later, to find myself thinking that was the best bloody fringe show I’ve ever seen.

Accompanied by his back up dancers the ‘lucky bitches’ and his band ‘the ungrateful bastards’, Hans the German took to the stage in typical flamboyant style – overtly loud and donned in a revealing sequinned bodysuit. This was only the beginning of many risqué costume changes and dance moves that would be performed in front of a packed Spiegeltent that night.

Touching base on all manner of songs such as Beyoncé, Britney and Liza, Hans combined music and dancing with brash ad-lib comedy that saw the front row sinking back into their chairs. With the kind of humour that only a gay-man-in-drag can get away with, he jokingly chastised anyone in sight, and including his own band – no one was safe!

Hans showed some serious moves, putting his early twenties back-up girls to shame (and telling us all about it). His talents weren’t restricted to singing and dancing either, performing a couple of songs on the keyboard and pulling out the accordion to do a German rendition of Amy Winehouse’s “Rehab”. He covered enough musical genres to leave all ages satisfied, and any show that gets the entire audience to their feet has got to be a hit.

Hans the German has both proved to me that my assumptions about drag cabaret were wrong and set a high standard to beat for every other show in the genre, if not the Fringe!