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Midnight at the Palace

 
A. A. Lewis Review by A. A. Lewis 2 Published: 8 Aug 2025 Gilded Balloon Patter House Show Dates: 30 Jul 2025-24 Aug 2025

Midnight at the Palace is an extroverted, unapologetic musical comedy by Brandon James Gwinnett and Rae Binstock based on true events. The Cockettes were an avant garde ensemble of hippie drag artists who became known for their psychedelic theatrics and countercultural politics from 1969 to 1972. Founded by Hibiscus in San Francisco, the short-lived collective began by parodying musicals but soon transitioned to performing their own material, garnering a cult following in the process. They created 20 shows over the course of their two-and-a-half-year existence and performed a series of midnight drag shows at the Palace Theatre in New York City. This is the backdrop of Gwinnett and Binstock’s Midnight at the Palace, which makes its world premiere at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2025.

It is in the production’s self-conscious celebration of its own fakeness that Midnight at the Palace really shines

I was instantly impressed by the production’s beautifully idiosyncratic scenic design, which feels fundamentally makeshift and DIY, as the Cockettes and their lifestyle inevitably were. Signs with location names (“San Francisco”, “New York”) are scrawled like finger paintings and presented – often comically – to audiences in what amounts to vaudeville-esque and amusing feats of storytelling, which the audience appreciated. In fact, it is in this very facet – the production’s self-conscious celebration of its own fakeness – that Midnight at the Palace really shines. The musical score is sometimes rather original, crossing the familiar rhythms and progressions of classical show tunes with something more rollicking that resembles the rock’n’roll of the Woodstock and post-Woodstock period. In many ways, the score is the most impressive part of the production, which its ensemble of actors handle with eloquence and style, all in spite of the occasional mic malfunction.

That said, the often clunky dialogue, cheap jokes and lack of effective characterisation to distinguish each unique personality in the Cockettes – including any compelling character development – leave the show feeling flat. What the script amounts to is a cacophony of character introductions, recitations of historical facts and figures, and very little action or engagingly dramatic events. What could have been a very strong show, with impressive production value and much to be praised, is ultimately let down by a limp script that lacks the sharpness and immediacy to make this story as compelling as it should be.

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The Blurb:

Living your true self is nearly a crime again, so join the OGs of F*ck You Counterculture for a night of radical joy and glitter-encrusted anarchy. A fever dream of gender-bending hippies, freaks and drag queens, led by flowers-in-guns radical Hibiscus and disco diva Sylvester, The Cockettes took San Francisco by storm in 1969. But when they tried to take their acid-fuelled, avant-garde act mainstream in NYC, it all went horribly wrong. A new musical with music & lyrics by Brandon James Gwinn and book by Rae Binstock, exploding with on-your-feet numbers and in-your-face hilarity.