Queen by Kyle J. Schmidt

Synopsis    

Self-dramatizing, decadent, and supremely dressed, Queen Marie is a ruler of uncompromising brutality. When revolutionaries storm the gates, Queen Marie keeps her head but loses her hands (literally).  Narrowly escaping the palace with her lover, her servant, her nephew, and an all-powerful Narrator who describes events as they occur, Queen Marie vows to retake the throne (and maintain her sense of pageantry).  After fashioning new hands out of junkyard materials, the Queen travels through an absurd war-torn fantasyland with her ragtag bunch of enabling cohorts hiding from revolutionaries, rallying the masses, and trying to wrench meaning from a world erupting in the fevers of late capitalism and neo-globalism.  Along the way, the Queen must undergo a series of ugly humiliations: selling wares, wearing pants, handling currency, posing for photographs, and performing in a cover band.  But no disgrace is too great to halt the Queen from singing, dancing, and massacring her way back to the throne.  

Part modern manifesto and part spectacular fantasy (but performed in all drag), Queen is theatre with gloves off, dresses on, and glitter make-up meticulously applied around the eyes.