Dragged Tae The Steamie at Johnstone Town Hall, reviewed by Mark Brown

THE Steamie – Tony Roper’s ever-popular play, with songs by Dave Anderson – was assured of its iconic status very shortly after its stage premiere in 1987. By the time it was being made as a TV film in 1988, this comedy (which is set in a Glasgow washhouse on Hogmanay 1950) was already being proclaimed a “classic”.

Since then there have been innumerable productions, including an audacious staging at the massive OVO Hydro arena in 2019. Perhaps the most innovative approach to the play came last year, when Finlay McLay directed the first authorised drag version of the piece, titled Dragged Tae The Steamie, at the Britannia Panopticon Music Hall in Glasgow.

Now, with an identical cast (save for the ever-excellent Darren Brownlie replacing Jim Dickson in the role of Dolly Johnstone), this Steamie-in-drag is touring Scotland. If its rapturous reception at Johnstone Town Hall – in front of an overwhelmingly (I’d say 85% to 90%) female, predominantly working-class audience – is anything to go by, the company has had very successful travels indeed.

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This is down in considerable measure to the play’s cult status. The Steamie is peppered with jokes that are so well known that they are anticipated with hilarity by the audience.

These include, most famously, the “Galloway’s mince” skit, in which old Mrs Culfeathers regales her chums, at agonising length, with her theory about her husband’s reception of minced beef from different butchers.

The show’s extraordinary popularity also rests on Anderson’s songs, such as the much-loved number titled Pals. Like Roper’s script, the songbook is as nostalgic as a Spitfire being serenaded by Vera Lynn.

That said, this cast of four men and one woman (including Kirsty Whyte as Andy, the washhouse technician played by Peter Mullan in the film), brings a new dimension to the play. It must be galling for the far-right knuckleheads and associated bigots who have been protesting against drag queen story hours in various parts of the UK to discover that one of the most popular stage shows in Scotland at the moment is a drag theatre production.

Without question, Dragged Tae The Steamie is tremendously good fun. Grant F Kidd (aka Auntie Effie) is gloriously bold-as-brass as the strident Magrit Maguire, while Darren Brownlie is equally hilarious as the daft-as-a-brush Dolly. Much comedy is wrought from the cross-casting, not least when the actors engage in Les Dawson-style pushing up of their fake bosoms.

No-one would claim that the production – which is raising cash for both the Glasgow Children’s Hospital and the Britannia Panopticon – is a polished affair. James T Smith (aka Nomi Divine), playing Doreen Hood, could be more audible, for instance.

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The show was also a tad under-rehearsed by the time it reached Johnstone. However, egged on by an entirely indulgent audience, the cast made some nice, ad-libbing comedy out of their dropped lines.

The production might be a little rough around the edges, but that didn’t stop the enthusiastic Johnstone crowd giving it a fervent standing ovation.