Winner of the Charlie Hartill Fund 2024, Crying Shame is a cabaret show-cum-wellness journey all about loneliness. In the dusty dreamscape of Club Fragilé, you’ll encounter washed-up cabaret acts, filthy lip-syncs and a joyous celebration of queer culture, as these camp clowns try – and possibly fail – to connect with each other and the audience. You might be lonely, but you’re definitely not alone.
Devised by emerging queer theatre collective Sweet Beef, who work to explore socio-political issues with a healthy dose of audience interaction and comedy, and originally developed as part of the Stanley Arts x Raze Collective’s Queer Commissions, Crying Shame explores the isolating effects of the pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis on our mental health. The show asks us to try and combat isolation with community and creative joy.
Sweet Beef conducted interviews with people across the UK discussing what loneliness means to them; these verbatim interviews have been intertwined with the acts own personal perspectives, layered with sparkle. While fantastical, and sometimes chaotic, Crying Shame is rooted in real-life perspectives. Expect biscuits, bubbles, confetti, tap dancing, sweaty sports classes, a box of confessions, glitz and glamour, shots and a whole lotta me time.
Crying Shame shows how loneliness affects everyone. If you’ve ever felt the teensiest bit lonely, this show is for you.
Sweet Beef comment, Crying Shame is about why we all feel like crying all the time. Young people are lonelier than ever and queer people’s mental health has plummeted since the pandemic. We’re all lonely and we’re all ashamed of it. Crying Shame uses comedy, drag, cabaret and high camp to take the piss out of self-care capitalism and allows audiences to share in the discomfort and shame of loneliness. It laughs at our need to succeed as relentlessly happy clowns, and challenges the absurdity of solving loneliness in a system that commercialises our basic human need for company. Ultimately, it creates community by allowing a room full of strangers to admit to each other that they are lonely, but not alone.
