On the road: Joe Black’s Club Cataclysm tours the UK and Ireland with 18 destinations to include Leicester.
By Shaikha Rahimi
Brighton-based drag artist Joe Black has embarked on his Club Cataclysm UK and Ireland tour, with a show at Leicester’s Y Theatre tonight.
With ticket prices starting at £22.50, the dark and decadent one-man show is set to be a sarcastic take on the current state of the world.
The tour started in Dublin on Wednesday, October 26. The drag artist will tour the UK and Ireland before finishing in Brighton on Sunday, November 20.
The dark cabaret drag artist and musician is best known for competing on the second series of RuPaul’s Drag Race UK. Black has expressed his love for music is one of the main reasons he is pursuing his career.
The Brighton-based drag artist regularly performs in his hometown, specifically in festivals such as the annual Brighton Fringe festival.
Club Cataclysm follows Black’s successful UK tour Decopunk which was held in the spring of 2022.
“Club Cataclysm is very much a hark back to my roots as purely a dark cabaret musician. It’s nice to revisit that with a more deep well of experience and to focus on bringing that back to life.
“It’s very unapologetically ‘Joe Black’, which I think for an audience that came to me purely through Drag Race UK is going to be interesting! It’s pretty far removed from the usual post-show content done by people,” said Black.
He has described Club Cataclysm as ‘less pop princess, more punk cabaret.’
Black said he comes up with the title of his tours through alliteration. “Usually I’ll take words I love and see what other words can allude to the same thing,” he said.
“Decopunk came from steampunk. Less goggles and airships, more dark glamour perhaps .. ?
“Club Cataclysm almost felt like a speakeasy for me. Part cult, part speakeasy. Some apocalyptic bunker where people go to forget their worries.”
Club Cataclysm will see Black return to performing many of his original numbers.
“With Decopunk I had someone else with me on the piano, so I didn’t do any live music myself really. This time it’s just me on my own, so I’m being let loose to cause whatever chaos occurs to me at the time and in the moment,” said Black.
Black’s latest single Final Curtain premiered on September 30, 2022. According to an interview with Strong Island, there is a long-awaited album on the way after Club Cataclysm.
In a post on Black’s Instagram promoting the single, he said: “I haven’t written my own song in years and this is one I am very proud of. Sorry to other Drag Race alumni that it’s not a club banger and I’m breaking the usual post-Drag Race tradition. (I’m not sorry).”
Club Cataclysm is set to indulge the audience among neon-lit rubble as it ‘veers ever quicker towards the end of the world as we know it.’
“Join me for an evening of devilish dirge, vaudevillian villainy, and musical mayhem,” said Black.
Audiences attending the show should expect ‘songs, stories, nonsense, tomfoolery, jazz, blues, and polka.’
“And a megaphone. I’ve fallen back in love with megaphones. Loud. Obnoxious. Glorious,” he said.
“Accordion, ukulele, and piano in tow, the soundtrack to the end has never been so jaunty. A cataclysmic cabaret to celebrate that nothing really works out in the end.
“An evening of mire, mirth, and dirge – oh my! It’s last orders at the bar, so let us toast and drink up. It’s going to be a bumpy ride,” said Black.
Doors for Club Cataclysm open tonight at 7pm and the show starts at 8pm at Leicester’s Y Theatre.
Tickets are available to purchase at https://joeblack.seetickets.com/tour/joe-black.
