HoE DnD Review

On the evening of Saturday, March 23, House of Elvira, Reed College’s seminal drag performance club, put on Dungeons and Daddies in the Student Union. To a crowd so massive that late arrivals found standing room only, the troupe of talented artists performed in the round, many operating on fundamental changes to their normal characters, and some engaging deeply in the fantastic themes evoked by the name of the show. The first show of 2024 saw club founders and Portland area drag personalities RiMoan and Nina Goth give the sort of killer performances we have grown to expect and love as an audience, but there were other highlights of the night.

Of the few performances more in a fantastical vein, standouts include a Trans-Gandalf performance, wherein the wisest of the Maiar defies a “homophobic society” and transitions her gender. This work is standout for its prop deployment and reveal of a profound breastplate on the immortal wizard. The questions raised by such a reimagining of one of Tolkien’s most beloved and storied characters cannot be understated; what to an eternal wizard, the greatest of his order, is gender, when his ‘bodily human’ form is essentially a chosen illusion; does the incredible power displayed by Gandalf’s breastplate speak to a liberated nexus for the broader society; how do we get a cool beard like that? Another jaw-dropping performance came from Mikey D, this time imagining a green-skin persona in his signature denim. We gather that this must be an orc, and it was certainly a promising personage for such a fanged being, although the lighting in the performance itself didn’t serve the green skin tone as much as it did other looks Saturday night. The music choice was a comfortable reflection of Mikey’s usual intensity and seemed to bring out a really powerful performance. 

BERSERK, a serial performance artist within the HoE cast, had a standout with a face painted white and a unique look befitting her usual visual iconography. The reviewers found a unique highlight of the night in Girl Fihairy, a gender-bent imagining of HoE regular Guy Fihairy, who seemed to be acting out some intense relationship drama with Mikey D., Girl’s costuming was immaculate, though again the lighting bled much colour confrontation out of the looks. The reveal of the heart and the revelling in the blood which leaked from it was sumptuous and iconic, really getting to the aspect of filth so often forgotten in urbane drag performances. A broad poll of audiences taken after the show appreciated the skin shown in this act and a few others through the night, a refrain the reviewer would like to highlight is ‘More skin is more!’ Performers throughout the night really gave more of themselves to the audience than was at all thought possible, and we should all be so grateful to see more of HoE later this semester and in years to come. A dominating example could come from the performance of the train song, which saw really marvellous armwork and great crowd reaction. Shrymp, Ciggy Stardust, and other performers not here highlighted still deserve commendations and consideration for the fantastic costuming, bodywork, and song choices shown throughout the night. Were it that the review had a higher word count, more would surely be said to emphasise each performer's remarkable efforts. Hopefully, the campus community has much much more House of Elvira to look forward to.