June is Pride Month in London. It’s an important time for the LGBTQ+ community, and a reminder that sexuality should be celebrated freely and openly.
In central London, the annual Pride Parade falls on July 1 this year, and will see over 30,000 participants march in colourful solidarity. Elsewhere, al fresco stages across the West End will come alight with queer-championing performances – with Trafalgar Square, Leicester Square and the Soho Stage throwing the biggest bumper bashes.
Closer to home, Eltham Palace’s annual Queer Walls event is taking guests back to the 1930s with a lavish cocktail party.
While the night’s cabaret performances should prove a whoop-worthy riot, the event is also a reminder that diverse sexual preferences are nothing new, even if we’ve only been able to celebrate them relatively recently.
With visitors encouraged to dress in their most glamorous, glittering attire, Eltham Palace’s Queer Walls event is dripping in Art Deco decadence.
It’s a celebration of the ancient English Heritage site’s 1930s glow-up too, really; a cheers to finding one’s identity and being unafraid of growing a new skin (or, in the case of the palace, having an extension built).
Guests can expect entertainment of a 30s nature too.
Hosting the event are leading drag king and queen Adam All and Apple Derrieres. The power-couple will strap on the personas of Stephen Courtauld and his wife Virginia, the couple who used to own the palace, hosting extravagant soirees there back in the day.
Together Adam and Apple could stake a strong claim to being south London’s favourite drag duo. The pair have been performing together for a decade now.
Their work is playful, musical and celebrates bodies in all their forms, in defiance of misogyny and gender binaries.
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They delivered a sung-through Ted Talk, ‘We are more than the sum of our parts’, in 2018, and continue to lead the way with bringing drag into heritage sites and cultural institutions.
Through an array of dazzling acts of the cabaret persuasion, you’ll learn about LGBTQ+ histories while sipping on strong cocktails and getting to know your fellow revellers.
Joining the drag royalty on stage is composer and cabaret performer Mark Bunyan; Ella the Great as Richard Melanin III; ‘madam of the avant-garde’ Mx Romeo De La Cruz; self-confessed diva Jade Love; and stage starlet Eliza DeLite.
By all accounts (okay, those of its organisers), Queer Walls promises to be a ‘truly wild and bohemian affair’.
So shrug on your sequins and your highest heels, and head back to the 30s.
Eltham Palace, Eltham Palace Court Yard, London, England SE9 5QE.
June 9, 7pm – 10pm.
Admission: £18/£14 concessions.
https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/whats-on/eltham-palace-queer-walls/
