Just when I thought it was safe to go back in the water after Sharon McNight’s salacious "Songs to Offend Almost Everybody" comes the ultimate warped, X-rated Holiday show delivered by the larger-than-life drag superstar Jackie Beat.  You’ve never heard your favorite holiday ditties sung quite like this: "Let It Snow" becomes a cocaine prescription for holiday listlessness (“do some blow, do some blow, do some blow”). "Silver Bells,", "Santa Baby" and "Jingle Bell Rock" are all lewd and crude and hilarious. Joan Rivers would blush.

Jackie Beat is a lot of shock, not in the in-your face Howard Stern style, but the fun, see-what-I-can-get-away with model. We like her and that allows her material to spill over you without leaving a messy stain. The mixed audience of her fans laughed and carried on comfortably accepting Beat’s smart and witty creation. Her banter with the audience was wicked fun, honed from years of club performances. In between holiday material (yes, she even included an ethnically correct Kwanzaa song and the delightfully chiding "Don’t Sing About Xmas You Jew") Beat channeled early TV themes songs (Cheers, Bewitched, Brady Bunch, etc…) with her unique special lyrics, too silly or blue to repeat here.

Jackie Beat was more than eager to Give Til It Hurts: a welcome respite from the over-reaching and sometimes overwhelming commercialism of Holiday muzak. Sometimes ya just gotta laugh at it all.

Steve Murray
Cabaret Scenes
December 20, 2007
www.cabaretscenes.org