Mulan Rouge. The Vaults.

The Vault’s Mulan Rouge is an unexpectedly enjoyable dinner-show cum cabaret mash-up that delivers a fun, friendly, and highly inclusive night-out.

24 June 2022

The vast maze of arch spaces that comprise The Vaults, hidden deep within the bowels of Waterloo Station (and not to be confused with the Network Theatre close by) is worth visiting just for the venue alone.

Put simple, it is one of London’s most extraordinary hidden architectural treasures.

The remarkable Banksy-founded public art space in Leake Street, where the entrance to the venue is situated, is a tourist attraction in its own right. Inside you can find a huge cathedral-like central arch, which I imagine is mainly used as a rave space, and a labyrinth of unexpectedly intimate areas for immersive theatre, cabaret, art happenings, and clubbing.

I saw the Quandary Collective’s competent gender-fluid Richard II in one of the Vault’s theatre spaces back in April 2022, and a pretty dire version of Moliere’s Dom Juan there in May 2022. Unfortunately, neither production really merited a review here, but it is third-time lucky for Mulan Rouge, the Venue’s highly enjoyable dinner show mash-up of cabaret, comedy drag, immersive burlesque pantomime, and musical spoof.

Disney’s animated and live-action productions of Mulan form one contributing strand that writer Shay-Shay draws on for the narrative of the show. Baz Luhrmann’s film and stage versions of Moulin Rouge provide the other.

If you are well-versed in the goings-on in either source production, it will probably help you understand the events in Mulan Rouge. But worry not. As with pantomimes like Aladdin or Dick Whittington, knowing what is going on is not a requisite (or even necessarily desirable) precondition for relishing the performance.

Plot-wise, it is sufficient to recount that the protagonist is young Mulan, a lonely girl who dresses up as man in order to defend her country from invasion by the fearsome Huns. In so doing she takes the place of her sickly father, whose main interest seems to be in getting his daughter married. Somehow (I may have been at the bar at this point) the action moves to a burlesque brothel in Paris, whose denizens provide a rich resource for mistaken identities and gender-fluid flirting.

That is as much as I can remember of the plot, but I promise you, it does not matter. There is enough camp comedy, sing-along songs, carry-on style ribaldry, gender bending French farce, and general drag bitchery to make narrative structure mostly redundant.

Action takes place between food courses. Diners sit at long shared tables, at either end of which are stages where the action unfolds. It is all rather cheek-by-jowl, and you probably need to be prepared for a bit of negotiation on food distribution with strangers. But somehow it all works.

What also works is the gratifyingly inclusive mix of audience types, comprising probably 200 or so on the evening me and my companions attended (it is probably a show only the most gregarious would attend alone). A large LGBT+ contingent mixed up with office groups, hen parties, tourists, and adult family groups. Like so much in the show, when written down like this it might seem an unlikely kind of concoction to work, but it does.

Under 18s are warned away, I assume due to the abundance of alcohol consumed rather with anything do to with the show. Anyone who has ever watched Ru Paul’s Drag Race will broadly-speaking have an idea of the fairly un-risqué level of double-entendre to expect. A more obvious warning is that if you are a gender-critical, Julie Burchill, GB News type, my suggestion (the polite one) is to book tickets at the Old Vic, just up the road, instead.

Food-wise, you are probably best to manage your expectations about what a venue that is obviously not set up as a restaurant can provide.  On that basis, the food is surprisingly OK, although a lettuce leaf topped with a dab of pesto is not everyone’s idea of an appetiser.

Along with dining, one of the main focuses of the show is drinking. The performers have enough spirit to work on through endless audience visits to the bar and loos, (although that might just have been our party). Anticipate loud and fruity merry-making, rather than a single G and T at the interval.

I did manage to make a couple of review notes during the performance, but soon gave up and just decided to enjoy the madness on offer. It is that kind of night out. Fantastic.

Written, Directed and Chroegraphed ShayShay

Set and Costume Christine Ting – Huan Urquhart

Lighting Design Clancy Flynn

Sound Design Daffyd Gough

Choreography Alisa James

Cast:

Ella Cumber

Grace Kelly Miller

Ruby Wednesday

Brett Sinclair

Daisy Porter

Carmella Brown

Lizzy Cox

Helena Fox

Duration: 3 hours approximately (or however long your ability to drink holds out)

Full Disclosure: I paid reduced box-office prices for the ticket.