‘I’ve performed extra cruises than Jane McDonald,” says Chris Dennis with a hoot. About 130 in all, he reckons, which his agent stated surpassed McDonald, essentially the most well-known cruise ship singer there may be. You received’t discover Dennis’s title on any billing, although, and a lot of the hundreds of people that have seen him carry out received’t comprehend it both. However they are going to know his alter ego, La Voix, a “northern powerhouse” of present tunes, sharp quips and vibrant crimson hairstyle. Maybe you’ve seen her slaying the runway on RuPaul’s Drag Race, dancing a pasodoble to Beethoven’s Fifth on Strictly, or showing as a “spokesqueen” on the current Eurovision. And now she’s about to sashay into her first position in a musical – as Miss Hannigan in Annie.
La Voix is an amalgam of the ladies Dennis knew rising up in Stockton-on-Tees: fast wit, heat coronary heart, belter of a voice, and all the time in possession of a shiny prime for an evening out. After 17 years of Drag Race on TV, we’ve seen the huge vary of what drag might be, from excessive vogue to political to efficiency artwork. However La Voix is traditional old-fashioned gentle leisure. Who, I ask Dennis, are your comedian influences? “Ken Dodd,” he says with no beat. “The horrible jokes that simply make you giggle. Bang, bang, bang, joke, joke, joke.” Barry Humphries’ Dame Edna and Paul O’Grady’s Lily Savage are large influences, too. And when TV’s Unfastened Ladies requested La Voix about dancing with Strictly accomplice Aljaž Škorjanec, her reply – “To be flung around the room by a muscular Slovenian, you’re not going to say no, are you?” – was pure Victoria Wooden.
“I wished the ethos to be mainstream, family-friendly enjoyable,” says Dennis. “I wished it to make folks really feel good.” He even tries to not swear. In reality, it was David Emanuel – Princess Diana’s wedding ceremony costume designer and maker of some frocks for La Voix – who advised him to show down the potty mouth. Dennis took the recommendation.
We’re chatting in a studio on the Nationwide Youth Theatre in London, the place Dennis is being stored on his toes in Annie rehearsals. “I don’t need to be upstaged by an eight-year-old!” He’s in a cream tracksuit, with spherical cheeks, glowy pores and skin, filled with chat and having a full-circle second. At 17, Dennis obtained into the Nationwide Youth Theatre: he remembers being within the very room we’re in now, dreaming of a future in musicals. Virtually 30 years later, it’s taking place. And Annie is a significant gig for him, as a result of Miss Hannigan was one in all O’Grady’s first musical roles, manner again in 1998. That was the 12 months Dennis got here to London: he’d go previous the theatre on the bus O’Grady’s image.
He has ended up in the proper place however he’s taken an fascinating route. Dennis’s first drag look was at a main faculty expertise present as Karen Carpenter, singing High of the World. “It was nothing like Karen Carpenter,” he laughs. “I had denim hotpants on and a gold lamé shirt. Karen Carpenter can be mortified. I lip-synced and obtained among the children behind me doing all of the strikes. Everybody was simply howling with laughter. I do not forget that laughter being actually addictive, and pondering, ‘I would like extra of that. I can change the entire vitality of the room.’ I’ve all the time chased that.” He doesn’t bear in mind any negativity or snide feedback. “Everybody thought it was enjoyable – ‘Oh, that’s simply Chris!’ I used to be all the time generally known as the cheeky child.” His mother and father, each nurses, had been unfailingly supportive.
After finding out drama and musical theatre, Dennis labored as a stage make-up artist, as soon as unknowingly aiding a jewelry heist after being booked to do “ageing” make-up on two males. This turned out to be a disguise for a £40m theft. He additionally labored at famend Soho membership Madame JoJo’s, singing Shirley Bassey and Liza Minnelli. This was the start of La Voix, though he didn’t have the banter then. “I bear in mind seeing all these different nice drag queens who had performed cabaret for years. The wit and comedy they’d – I used to be in awe.”
He realized the craft of connecting with the viewers, whether or not in Soho bars or on cruise ships filled with retirees, the place La Voix was heartily embraced. “It actually felt as if I discovered my folks on cruise ships,” says Dennis. “I’ve performed swingers cruises, homosexual cruises, lesbian cruises, naturist cruises. You title it, I’ve performed it.” How was the swingers cruise? “Properly, I didn’t get entangled. However there’s black tarpaulin over the home windows in sure bars. You assume, ‘Oh my God, it’s all going to occur in right here!’”
He as soon as took his mum on a homosexual cruise. “Six thousand homosexual males raving. She stated, ‘I didn’t even realise there have been that many homosexual males on this planet!’” Dennis laughs – however he’s critical when he talks about how releasing these LGBTQ+ environments really feel: “To expertise life as a majority, not a minority, for a interval.”
It’s no shock that La Voix can be a longtime panto fixture. She’s Tinker Bell in Peter Pan in Excessive Wycombe this 12 months. “I really like panto. I’ve performed panto with Cilla Black, Mickey Rooney …” What was Cilla like? “She was every part you need Cilla Black to be. She was a diva, you recognize, she didn’t socialise with us. However every time we went over to the native bar, they’d say, ‘Oh, there’s £200 left behind the bar from Cilla.’”
Black herself had a bottle of champagne in her dressing room for each present, together with matinees. “And we misplaced the final week of the pantomime as a result of she wished to go to Barbados with Cliff Richard.” Dennis acknowledges panto’s affect on British drag. “Individuals develop up understanding males in clothes,” he says. “It’s not scary or unusual. I believe we’ve rather more understanding of viewers interplay and participation. Go to America and it may be much more chopping and chilly.”
La Voix had a superbly busy life earlier than TV got here calling, however her profile has since rocketed – and with it the stress. “Individuals count on your confidence to rise, too. Nevertheless it doesn’t. There’s nonetheless part of me that appears like a little bit boy inside, going, ‘Oh my gosh, that is big!’ I do get actually nervous – as a result of the expectation is you’ll be humorous, that you simply’ve obtained this. However what if I haven’t?”
Possibly La Voix’s obtained it for you. “You’ve hit the nail on the top!” says Dennis. “I all the time say, ‘I’m undecided if I can do that, however she’ll get me by.’ She’ll have the reply. And it actually is sort of a full swap in mind and character.” Dennis additionally credit his fiance Luke, his longtime tour supervisor, with being a terrific backstage help.
Requested why he created La Voix, Dennis as soon as stated he simply beloved the glamour. If it had been extra acceptable to be a glamorous man in Stockton within the Nineties, I counsel, maybe he would have performed a special type of act. “Very, very true,” he says thoughtfully, then provides: “However at coronary heart, I’m an actor who adores taking part in girls.” What’s so interesting? “I believe as a result of girls have had such an affect on my life. I used to be very near my mum. I grew up in a care residence [where his parents later worked], through which there have been predominantly older girls. All of the academics I bear in mind fondly had been additionally girls.
“As a younger homosexual man, I didn’t relate to the masculinity of sports activities and of my dad. I discovered all {that a} bit scary. After we did the boxing ring cha-cha-cha for Strictly – famously my dangerous week – we went to an precise boxing ring with a boxing teacher and I discovered it daunting and triggering. I actually didn’t get pleasure from that week.”
Nonetheless, Dennis does need to act as himself in some unspecified time in the future. “I’d like to do a critical position as Chris and discover that.” However that may wait, now La Voix is having her second. “I believe there’s a extremely large place for La Voix as the subsequent Dame Edna or Lily Savage,” says Dennis. “Not from a private ambition factor. It’s simply that I’m an enormous believer in gentle leisure. I actually need to see how far she will be able to go. It’s virtually as if it’s not me. It’s her – and I’m her largest advocate.”
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