Frocks Rock!

Yet while these divas are the glitziest stars in our Karangahape night, many gays know stuff-all about where they work. With Finale about to turn four, and eleven-year-old Caluzzi having just celebrated its second birthday under Campbell Orr’s able management, the time seemed ripe to slip behind the scenes of these tinselly locales to meet a couple of the long-legged ladies.

Both venues are now packing in the crowds nightly, between four and seven nights a week, but it wasn’t always like this. According to Felisha, one of Finale’s stars, it all started in the kitchens at Caluzzi, with her pal, the latest greatest queen of them all.

“I used to be the chef at Caluzzi. One of my girlfriends would come and pick me up on Friday and Saturday, and she’d either have a show or I’d get changed upstairs and we’d both go out clubbing – that was Courtney Cartier.”

Then one night Caluzzi’s management asked them where they were off to and suggested they offer a mid-winter Christmas on a Sunday night.

“So we started doing a mid-winter Christmas with Courtney and I running around as the fairies!”

Winter gave way to summer and they were still going strong. They moved it to a Friday night, then included Saturdays and later Thursdays too, abandoning lunches and concentrating on the cabaret dinners.

“We decided to employ a couple more girls, and I left the kitchen... became the girl on the floor.”

One of the longest reigning queens on Caluzzi’s podium remembers Felisha and Courtney starting off those nights: Elibra Fleur, “their party girlfriend”, would be cheering them on from the bar.

“I started flatting with Courtney and Felisha and got into performance through them. So that’s when I started defining Elibra because they were doing drag at Legend.”

Felisha continues:

“As the years went by... the girl passed away [Courtney Cartier, after whom the Cartier Bereavement Charitable Trust is named] ... We had a huge reputation in the straight community, if not a huge one in the gay community... it was famous as.”

Now Caluzzi runs a rotating roster, hosted by Miss Ribena, Miss Beaver Brown or Miss Kola, employing about four of their twelve regulars every night. Other performers include Ling Ling, Zoe, Voodor and Cornisha. As well as this, quite a few of the girls perform down at Family or at other corporate gigs. Each girl markets herself, but there is a Caluzzi website, so if anyone wants a girl to do a function for them, they can contact Campbell online.

What Felisha describes as her Hollywood moment came four years ago:

“My flatmate from when I first started at Caluzzi came back to me... and she said: ‘Are you guys still doing drag, at Caluzzi?’ And we said ‘Yes, yes...’ and she came and had a look at it, and her Dad wanted to open a business. So she wondered if I’d bring my sisters along and open Finale up there.”

It was a risk, but it was worth it. Bigger, brighter, bolder...

“It was like going to Hollywood really, you know? You finally get your stage in Las Vegas, the ostrich feathers... It just had that extra spin on it. They offered us a stage and lighting and materials to do our show. They gave us a budget. We got costumes... And it kept us employed as our fulltime job... So it’s nine years now since I’ve had a normal daytime job [laughs her distinctive staccato laugh].”

It beats working in a bank... and Finale is now getting ready to celebrate its four-year anniversary. Having both locales within a stone’s throw of each other on K’Rd has in fact helped them both, creating a reputation as Auckland’s queen strip.

“It’s been a struggle from one end to the other,” says Felisha, “but... I think we’re coping quite well with each other.”

Both venues maintain their own distinctive style while catering predominantly to the same clientele.

“Our customers are heterosexual party groups.” comments Elibra. “At the moment it’s hen’s season so it’s mainly girls, but at other times it can be businesses, birthdays.”

Yet gay groups still book in. Felisha at Finale never misses the chance for a bit of stirring:

“It’s like ‘Oh, there’s our fifteen percent!’”

And the crowds come in busloads all the way down from Whangarei, up from Wellington and from all over the North Island.

The two venues differ in style and therefore attract a slightly different client profile. The Finale team rehearse and premier a new show every few months, with an emphasis on duos and group numbers. Felisha describes their act as “quite a stage show, you know... the way I like to put it is mixing Debbie Dorday with Les Girls, except we’re not girls and we’re not transsexuals; we’re queens.”

Currently, since it’s hen’s season, they are performing “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun”, all about love and getting married. The last show, on a travel theme, climaxed back in Aotearoa with a poi finale, and in May they’ll be premiering their mid-winter Christmas spectacular “Solid Gold”.

“We recycle occasionally. We’ve done a ‘Best of’ show and every now and again something slips back in. If something works why get rid of it?”

On the other hand, each Caluzzi artiste chooses and presents her own repertoire of songs, pushing her own style; for example, Elibra enjoys working with a more hip-hop or R+B sound, Ling-Ling with songs like Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend, or Madonna. Groups can ask for a particular girl to perform on the night they book. Its very lack of a stage makes Caluzzi more intimate, allowing closer contact with patrons, while being open to the street ensures more spontaneous moments.

Size is another factor. Caluzzi holds a good 70 patrons while Finale can wine and dine a full 150 people a night. They open three or four nights of the week for most of the year, but work seven nights a week for two months over Christmas. At sixty dollars a head, you do the sums! Both locales have won awards: Caluzzi won Metro magazine’s best cabaret dining experience 2005 plus 10 Golden Stiletto awards, including Best Drag Venue two years’ running; Finale was declared best Auckland restaurant at the Corporate Events Guide Awards 2006.
I asked Felisha how her audience saw her?

“You gotta remember what we’re doing is based towards straight people so you can’t... [whispers] be too camp! [laughs her distinctive laugh]... Parts of our comedy they won’t understand, so you’ve got to ‘tame it down’ for them. Don’t be too queer-orientated. You can lift your skirts, you know... they can’t see anything because you look like action man down there anyway! [laughs]
You arrive at work and... you have fishbowl hour, where they just sit and stare at you... You’ve got to realise, well, look at you... a six-foot Amazon woman! How they gonna see ya?
They always ask the same questions. They always want to know where it goes, how long you can do it and what do you do in the daytime.

“The guys come in with their arses against the wall and then by the second show they’re talking to you. Their level of freaking out comes down to ‘Oh my God! They’re people!’ And they’re actually enjoying what they’re seeing. So once they get over that whole freaking out part of men in a frock, they realise we actually do know what we’re doing and we’re quite good at it.
The women [tend to] look for the cracks. They try and rip you apart. That that doesn’t look natural. And then you sit there and look at them and go, well I took two hours to get ready... and you look like it was half an hour! [laughs] You are a crack!”

But everyone eventually gets into it, into the fantasy:

“You send them on a little journey, a journey away from themselves.”

Which isn’t about being a woman. It’s about being a queen. Felisha believes “it’s the female impersonation side of it, but still retaining your manhood. Pushing it to the extreme, but not crossing the line.”

Elibra agrees: “I am a man dressed as girl. It’s like a performance persona.”

In June, when Finale celebrates its birthday, they’ll be throwing open their doors, with one night just for the GLBT community. There’ll be 28 international and national drag performers – queens coming from near and far. So if you haven’t been to dinner and a show at Finale yet, this sounds like it will be a wild night. Caluzzi always enjoys getting visits from “family” too. If you haven’t booked for dinner, drop in for a drink from 9.30 onwards.

• Caluzzi, 461 Karangahape Rd, 09 357 0778, www.caluzzi.co.nz
• Finale, 350 Karangahape Rd, 09 377 4820, www.350finale.co.nz
  

© Kevin Booth 2007.