Those who have been following the blog for a while will remember that roughly a year ago we embarked on a mini international pride tour that included stops in Hungary (available at https://rhysreviews.com/2022/07/26/hungary-2022-part-one/), London family pride (available at https://rhysreviews.com/2022/06/27/mama-g-family-pride-event-number-two/) and the long-awaited Pride Cymru (available at https://rhysreviews.com/2022/08/28/pride-cymru-2022-experience-review/) with each event focusing on a different aspect of queer celebration. When I was telling people about this pseudo-tour I was met with countless strong recommendations of booking Brighton Pride as it is one of the best pride celebrations in the UK! Due to all these comments, I decided to make the almost four-hour-long journey to Brighton by train to check out of it was really worth all the hype. I and my friends decided to make a full weekend of the experience by booking an amazing Air B and B that was located a mere 20min walk from the pier (which we visited every night) which acted as an almost base camp every night as I spent the majority of each day at pride celebrating self-expression!
Anyone who knows me in real life will know that I absolutely adore pun-infused drag names so when I announced a queen called Mary O’kart was set to appear to Brighton Pride I knew I had to make sure I had a space in the cabaret legends tent. The other element of drag that I thoroughly enjoy is when performers have meticulously made sure that their performance had a coherent and cohesive theme which Mary did the highest degree. This new queen paid homage to her namesake by coming out in a pink, princess peach inspired looked flanked by two dancers dressed as Mario and Luigi. On top of these visual queen also ensured that the iconic Mario sound effect played during every song transition to really drive home the overarching theme. My favourite track however was an adapted version of the Macarena that had been re-written with original lyrics. It must have been incredibly difficult to remember the amended lyrics to such an iconic song but I have to admit I have had the chorus refrain “Mary O’kart” stuck in my head since seeing this act live. This queen delivered my personal favourite performance on Saturday with a full-on production complete with wonderful thematic costumes, impressive dance choreography and incredible stunts (including a death drop and costume reveal) throughout! Mary even released a full recorded version of her performance at Brighton Pride on YouTube (available at: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=i7AtGAnUwKA&feature=youtu.be) so you can check out this amazing show for free without the need to take the long journey to Brighton!
One of the acts I was most surprised to see was none other than the Ru Paul’s drag race season four contestant Copper Top. While this queen being on the line-up itself was not particularly a big surprise, what the queen decided to present to the audience was almost the polar opposite of what I expected from her time on the show. I vividly remember Copper going on the show talking about how she is an experienced pantomime performer and so I was expecting camp comedy but it was much more in the vein of pop punk. She came on with an intense ginger spiked wig and spikes all over her body which didn’t fit the family-friendly dame idea I had in my head! As she went home fairly early on her time on the show, I did not know that Copper was such a talented performer/vocalist with her performances of Confidence and Believer being a particular highlight! I was also very excited to see that Alfie Ordinary would be gracing the cabaret legends stage as this is someone who I had heard lots about but have never actually seen live. They graced the stage in a gorgeous red sparkly, devil-infused outfits as they delivered a wonderfully eccentric performance which the audience appeared to love! With a set list comprising of Hey Baby by DJ Ötzi, we are the Champions by Queen and Sweet Caroline (which I often associate with non-queer venues but the pride audience were loudly getting involved.) The energetic performer had everyone singing and dancing alone which really helped to get people ready for the headline acts later in the night!
Overall, my first-ever experience of Brighton Pride was crammed full of cabaret as not only was this the place where the majority of the acts I wanted to see were located but also was the one of the few places that were undercover and safe from the torrential rain. While I spent most of my time here, you could easily spend hours wandering around as the event had exciting rides, delicious food stalls, queer-centric independent movie screenings etc that could keep you entertained for hours! Overall I would rate my first day at Brighton Pride 4.5 stars out of 5!
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