Drag Race Down Under’s Rhys Nicholson on how queer married life informs their new Edinburgh show
Rhys Nicholson is married – and they’re having a Big Huge Party Congratulations! (Monica Pronk)
Comedian and RuPaul’s Drag Race Down Under star Rhys Nicholson is taking their hilarious standup show Huge Big Party Congratulations! to the Edinburgh Fringe – here’s how their years of being ‘indefinitely betrothed’ got them there.
“You have to name a show like a month before you even put fingers to laptop,” Rhys Nicholson tells PinkNews.
“When I got married last year, my father-in-law replied to our wedding invitation in all capitals with: ‘Huge Big Party Congratulations!’ And you know when you get a turn of phrase, stuck in your head? It sounded very ‘English as a second language to me.'”
And thank god the phrase stuck, because the standup set from the award-winning comedian can only be described as such. Nicholson and their husband, Kyran Wheatley, tied the knot last year after being “indefinitely betrothed” for a while – something that they themself recognise lends itself to a lot of comedy.
But Huge Big Party Congratulations is more than a pithy (and hilarious) remark on Nicholson’s end to their seemingly perpetual engagement; it’s also a suitably biting commentary on what the ‘after’ in ‘happily ever after’ means for queer couples.
“I was, within Australia at least, becoming the comedian always talking about how I’m gonna get married, and it was starting to look a bit like a psycho,” they say. “I guess the ‘thesis’ of the show is whether we want to have kids or not.”
For queer couples, that understandably looks very different than their heterosexual counterparts, but the pressure is much more nuanced.
“As soon as you say: ‘Maybe I don’t want to have a kid, maybe that’s not right for me,’ people tend to get [a bit weird about it.]”
That, Rhys hypothesises, is rooted deep in what queer people are considered to be in society.
“For a long time, we were only ever villains in things. And then we stopped being that. And now, we can only ever be super pure, familial beings. And I kind of yearn for when we can be bad people again!
“Similarly, in culture, we can only be super safe family people or degenerates. There’s a middle ground, just wanting to, maybe, not have a child, and not having exactly the same nuclear family.”
In Nicholson’s own words, though, their comedy hasn’t always been as family-oriented, in more ways than one.
“I fell into a trap that a lot of queer comics do where I was maybe not super useful to the community, that kind of played up to that idea, that was playing up to the idea of ‘Well, I’m a gay slut!'”
And, to add, a few of the ‘straight couples’ in the audience might have some culture shocks about the functionings of a queer family unit – not least because of Nicholson’s self-admitted “pathological problems where [they] can’t help but be very honest.”
“At times [that] has gotten me in trouble with family!” they laugh. “Often I think that comedians lie to exaggerate things, but often when we lie it’s to hide things.
“People go to see a standup show to see themselves painted back at them. Like, me blurting out embarassing things about myself hopefully then makes the audience go: ‘Ok, they do that too, that’s good.'”
Now they’re all ‘officially’ loved-up, though, Nicholson makes it clear that they’re not top of the list to dish out dating advice for their single friends (and one specific PinkNews reporter who asked the question).
“I’m the worst person to ask!” they say. “I got into a relationship, I would say, accidentally, at like 21. And by that I mean we just started f**king and it stuck. And we’ve been monogamous the whole time. I had Grindr for pen pals.”
When it comes to ‘proper advice’, though, Rhys does concede one golden nugget. “Kyran and I do genuinely make each other laugh, and have for like… 15 years. My favourite part of the day is my husband and I laying in bed and unpacking the day. And b*tching about people in our lives. Find someone that genuinely makes you laugh.”
Nicholson is one of a gamut of queer talent heading to the Edinburgh Fringe, along with the likes of Kate Butch, Dan Wye and more. But what do they like so much about the famed Scottish festival?
“I get to see all these shows, but it’s a big convention where we all get to just hang out and be silly! I reckon the best show is on the street, and I don’t mean street performances, I mean if you’re out at 2am you might see Phoebe Waller bridge very drunk, eating a crepe. It’s realising that everyone is also kind of having a bonkers Fringe.”
As mentioned earlier, Nicholson’s rise to a perhaps more global level of fame came hand-in-hand with a spot as RuPaul and Michelle Visage’s right-hand-non-binary-comedian for the oceanic Drag Race spinoff Down Under.
But while they tease “the most bonkers, off the charts” season ever (in a follow up interview to come), it’s heads down and laughs up to Edinburgh Fringe first.
Rhys Nicholson is bringing their new stand-up comedy hour ‘Huge Big Party Congratulations!’ to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, followed by a UK tour in the autumn. Tickets for tour are available here. Tickets to ‘Huge Big Party Congratulationsat the Edinburgh Fringe, 31 July – 25 August, Bristo Square, are available here.
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