I continue to be blown away by the talents of Seattle native and drag superstar BenDeLaCreme.
Ben has a brand of humor that goes beyond telling the typical type of bar jokes you see at your average drag club. His wit and intelligence are so evident in the roles that he plays that you totally feel like you got your dollars’ worth after his show is done.
The RuPaul’s Drag Race season 6 and All Stars 3 legend has come up with a new show that takes his elevated humor to levels I didn’t know existed. It’s called BenDeLaCreme Is… Ready To Be Committed.
Ben did this show briefly at The Laurie Beechman Theatre in the heart of Times Square, days before WorldPride kicked off. It was the calm before the storm in New York City and the perfect excuse to stay inside an air-conditioned area while Ben did his thing on stage for 90 minutes of sheer brilliance.
The show centers around Ben’s journey to get married to the man of her dreams… except she has no idea who that is just yet even though she only has about an hour to make it all happen.
Along the way you see Ben scour the apps in a delusional kind of way (Grindr) to see if she can find that special someone even though most of the respondents are either bots, one-word answer kind of guys (Sup?) or simply want to have her in a very piggy-esque kind of way.
Ben chooses the piggy guy in hopes that he will be her one true love although she’s totally oblivious to the fact that he only wants to do her in the dirtiest of ways (he suggests giving her a facial which makes her think of a spa day).
There are pre-recorded videos that happen throughout that go along with the wedding theme. Ben does a much gayer parody of Say Yes to the Dress where he plays several distinct characters, each to their own hilarity.
You have the over-the-top owner who can’t seem to keep things straight, the new hire who I believe is a heterosexual (or just dumb) and my favorite being the one who isn’t in the episode at all… only the promo. The amount of hysteria that happens when Ben isn’t happy with the first dress parlays so well with how dramatized reality series can be, which Ben hit the nail on the head with.
Ben put so much into this show that its hard to really grasp how he’s able to do it with no breaks. She raps, does her own take on Beyonce’s “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)”, has a conversation with a talking Doritos bag and a plastic bride and groom set that you find on top of a wedding cake.
All of what has already been mentioned is part of a much larger show about the idea of finding the one in the modern world of dating. It goes along with her whole theme of “terminally delightful” in that you know what’s going on is really not good but she’s so optimistic about everything that you can’t help but to root for her while laughing your ass off at every single thing that happens along the way.
This is a show that Ben will be performing throughout the summer in Provincetown, Massachusetts, so if you plan on being on the island of Cape Cod over the next two months then go see her show. It’s worth it and then some.
More info here.
This post was created by one of our Contributing Writers and does not reflect the opinion of Instinct Magazine or the other Contributing Writers when it comes to this subject.