Brandon James Gwinn is no stranger to pushing musical theatre into bold new territory. With a background rooted in Nashville’s songwriting scene and a flair for genre-bending composition, Gwinn now brings their latest project, Midnight at the Palace, to the Edinburgh Fringe. The show, inspired by the radical 1970s drag troupe The Cockettes, promises a riotous hour of glitter, rebellion and unapologetic queer joy.
“I grew up in Nashville, Tennessee, which is a very music-forward town,” Gwinn explains. “I was a songwriter from my youth… but falling into musical theatre kind of happened sideways.” It wasn’t until university that Gwinn realised musicals were still being written. “I thought musical theatre was this historical form… that no one’s ever written anything new since then.”
That changed when Gwinn joined NYU’s Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program. “They taught us to write fast and dirty… to find a way in to why you like the thing and have something interesting to say about it.” That ethos is evident in Midnight at the Palace, which blends Gwinn’s Nashville roots with jazz, rock and vintage musical theatre to tell the story of The Cockettes.
“The Cockettes were flower children hippies… drag artists before we had the word,” Gwinn says. “They looked at the mainstream and said, ‘I don’t fit into that.’” The troupe’s performances were a chaotic, glitter-drenched mix of 1920s musical stylings and 1960s counterculture. “Here are a bunch of hippies in 1968 with glitter in their beards, doing songs that sound like they were written by Cole Porter in 1926.”
The show’s musical palette reflects that eclecticism. “There’s a healthy dose of what was on the radio at the time; The Rolling Stones, Petula Clark, The Turtles, and then there’s at least one number that’s a solid Rodgers and Hammerstein, Cole Porter-esque moment… but it’s also very modern.”
Working alongside book writer Rae Binstock and director-choreographer Paul McGill, Gwinn was brought onto the project by producers Sing Out, Louise! Productions. “It’s been their brainchild to honour and celebrate the Cockettes,” Gwinn says. “We wanted to find a real point of view, why should we care now?”
That urgency is part of what makes Midnight at the Palace feel so timely. “A lot of shitty things are going on in the world again,” Gwinn reflects. “It feels nice and important to talk about what queer folks do when shit like that goes down. And here’s an option.”
As for their first time at the Fringe? “I’ve never been to Scotland. I’m so excited,” Gwinn beams. “We want it to be fringy… a testing ground for this material. No other humans on the planet besides the team will have heard this stuff.”
And if you bump into Gwinn on the Royal Mile? “Follow me. You’re going to see some of the sexiest, most talented people in the craziest costumes at the Fringe. You’ll hear some of the best singing in the world, and you might learn something, too.”
Midnight at the Palace runs from 30th July to 24th August 2025 (not 12th or 19th) at 21:30 at Gilded Balloon Patter House (Big Yin), Edinburgh. Tickets available here.
