REVIEW: Steve the Queen - Cosmo Creative at PIP Theatre

Presented by: Cosmo Creative

Venue: PIP Theatre

Written by: Zachary Lurje and Daniel Gough

Production Design: Matti Crocker

Lighting Design: Jon Whitehead

Sound Design: Andrew Oxford

Costume Design: Lottie Banford

Content advisory: coarse language, adult themes, flashing lights and haze

Cast:

Steve the Queen – Daniel Gough

Davey – Samuel French

Judy – Kerith Atkinson

Lee – Tayla Rankine

“I don’t have a mum and I don’t have a dad. I have a Steve.”

That line hangs over Steve the Queen like a glittering disco ball. Presented by Cosmo Creative at PIP Theatre and written by Zachary Lurje and Daniel Gough, this show is a camp comedy / family drama. Beneath the wigs, sequins and outrageous jokes sits a heartfelt story about grief, identity, and the messy nature of family.

Minor spoilers ahead. The play opens with a moment that immediately tells us what kind of world we’re entering. Davey’s dad turns up to a Year 7 parents day straight from work. Except “work” happens to be hosting in full drag. The entrance is anything but subtle. There is attitude. There is absolutely no attempt to blend in with the other parents. And they promptly get kicked out for causing a scene. Fast forward to Davey in Grade 12 and things are a whole lot more grown-up and complicated. While the teen characters, Davey and Lee, are getting busy in bed, Steve is on stage lip syncing Whitney Houston’s Queen of the Night.

Production designer Matti Crocker gives the show a vibrant playground to live in. The set presents like a collision between Steve’s stage life and his home life. A glowing catwalk juts out into the audience. A checkerboard floor gleams under the lights. There is a bed with leopard-print sheets, neon signage glowing on the backdrop, and a disco ball hanging overhead. One minute feathers are floating into the audience during Wind Beneath My Wings. The next moment you may find condoms flying your way during Respect. Lighting by Jon Whitehead leans fully into the nightclub energy with flashes of colour and sparkle, while Andrew Oxford’s sound design keeps the drag numbers punchy and theatrical. Costumes by Lottie Banford bring the glamour in full force: wigs, pearls, pumps, and sequins.

Co-writer Daniel Gough plays the title character Steve, both the drag persona and the struggling father underneath it all, and commits completely to the chaos of the character. Even his smallest acting choices are hilarious. But what makes his performance work is the vulnerability sitting underneath the glitter. Daniel must switch between being sassy, outrageous, and occasionally cruel; sometimes behaving more immaturely than his own son! Underneath all the flashy bravado, you can just spot the insecurities. Being Steve the Queen is easy... But being Steve the father is much harder.

Samuel French as Davey gives the play its emotional centre. Davey is clearly exhausted from living in the shadow of his father’s larger than life personality. His line, “I am the backup dancer in the production of your life!” lands with a real sting. The confrontation scenes between Daniel and Samuel are where the play really crackles. When Davey begs Steve to drop the character and just be honest for once, the comedy falls away and suddenly everything gets real o'clock as Davey unloads years of frustration and hurt. Their stage dynamic is magnetic; full of sarcastic deflections and sharp jabs, and we see the cruel side of both father and son through these actors.

Tayla Rankine is fantastic at portraying Lee, Davey’s girlfriend. Lee is proud, observant, emotionally intelligent, and in many ways she is the only character in the room capable of calmly seeing the situation for what it is. Rankine delivers several moments of brutally honest tough love that made me physically wince in my seat. The kind of lines that make the whole audience quietly go “oof.” There’s a brilliant confidence to her performance that cuts through the chaos around her.

Kerith Atkinson plays Judy, Steve’s mother in law and Davey’s grandmother. She is caring but can be blunt, opinionated, and never shy about offering advice that nobody asked for. Steve and Judy’s relationship is a time bomb, with arguments escalating from passive aggressive sniping to full blown shouting matches. While Atkinson delivers strong comic timing and bite, but it was hard for me to see her as a grandma with a past of alcohol abuse (sorry!), especially since she's supposed to be around 50-60 years old with an 18-year-old grandson.

The writing itself is sharp, unapologetic Aussie humour that the audience responds to instantly. Lines like “My teenage son is having more sex than me!” and “As punishment we are having a father/son Bette Midler marathon!” get big laughs. But the comedy never exists in a vacuum. The jokes often slide into something darker as the play reminds us that underneath all the spectacle is a story about grief.

I had the chance to briefly ask co-writer Zachary Lurje about the inspiration behind the play. He mentioned that audiences might recognise echoes of stories like The Birdcage and Priscilla Queen of the Desert but he also drew from his own time living in the Northern Territory, where he spent time around the drag community and saw similar family dynamics firsthand.

What makes Steve the Queen so compelling is that nobody here is entirely right or entirely wrong. In Zachary Lurje and Daniel Gough’s writing, each character feels painfully human. Steve is terrified of vulnerability so he hides behind drag. Davey wants honesty but lashes out in anger. Judy weaponises her guilt. These characters refuse to communicate like reasonable adults. They deflect, joke, lash out, and avoid the truth until the tension finally boils over and words are thrown around that cannot be taken back.

One line in particular lingered with me:

“A normal family is the cruellest lie there is.”

Steve the Queen mixes camp spectacle with some very real emotional wounds and asks what happens when the person who commands the spotlight struggles to be present for the people who need them most. And as the glitter settles and the wigs come off, one question quietly remains: Who are we when our performance ends?