The Pageant | The Beryls
How do you host a show about children’s beauty pageants without any children?
My mum and I wondered as we wandered into Elements Collective on Friday night. We were welcomed by big pink curtains and two glamourous hosts who tottered around the space, getting ready for the show. These ridiculous characters, Roger Seahorse and Victoria Beauvoir, made the rounds with the audience, greeting them as if they were parents and contestants and dolling out nametags with pompous titles such as Judy Jorgenstein and Scramble Simpson. From what I have seen of Toddlers and Tiaras and Little Miss Sunshine, pageants are all about fluffing the parents’ egos and putting on airs, which the two matched to a tee. I found the audience begun to play with each other before the show, addressing each other by their new names and interacting as dear frenemies. I began to feel as though we were attending the real thing.
Roger Seahorse, played by Laura Trennery, was a stiff, wide-eyed dork of a man, clad in a bedazzled pale blue suit. He was timid but endearing and practically plastic with fake tan and glowing white teeth. Victoria Beauvoir, played by Patrick Dwyer, was lush, larger than life, suggestive and sexually available in a shimmery gown and a cloud of blonde curls. Both characters were extreme, almost demonic, caricatures of pageant hosts. The footlighting cast shadows across their faces that twisted their white smiles.
The two performers worked well together, never missing a beat. They egged each other on and had me holding my breath when they went into weird loops of things, repeating mantras like ‘You’re a star’ to each other. It was like watching best friends who had been hanging out for too long. They launched into awesome, original musical numbers supported by great singing voices and harmonies. Abusive pageant traditions such as wearing flippers (false teeth), pinning ears back and giving children energy drinks were expertly hidden in cheery songs. Their commitment was powerful, neither performer dropped their character for a moment. At one point, Victoria screeched like a monkey with such conviction that the audience had no choice but to laugh.
Gender-bending the roles was a clever choice. The performers emphasised the ridiculousness of gender as a performance and subverted expectations. The show criticised ideas of masculinity and femininity and the highly gendered culture of pageantry, asking questions such as: Who has permission to be pretty? What makes a person valuable? The performers lured the audience in with fun, faff and humour and struck some very dark chords.
But how do you host a show about children’s beauty pageants without any children?
*Spoilers Ahead*
Audience participation! The show was divided into different categories for different skills and age groups. I was lucky (or unlucky) enough to go up and read a poem as Phillipa Grace Darling and, as if it were scripted, my mum jumped up and began to film enthusiastically. I felt real world embarrassment. Some audience members loved the opportunity to show off, while others were crushed under the awkwardness of public speaking. I heard one audience member muttered ‘oh god’ when called up for a challenge. The performers gave audience members the experience of being watched and it made me empathise with the children who are roped into these things.
Children’s beauty pageants are a strange phenomenon, and The Pageant holds a magnifying glass to their distorted ideas of beauty, archaic and sexualised notions of gender and harmful practices toward children. The duality of the bright façade and dark underbelly was intense and disturbing, and still I had a lot of fun.
