![]() Le Gateau Chocolat’s unique brand of performance couldn’t be contained by the Brighton underground for long. “My drag isn’t about female impersonation, but about being chameleonic and shapeshifting in a way that’s protecting myself” Ahead of his 40th birthday next year, he feels this has morphed again, this time into something more liberating: “Today my drag isn’t about something else, it’s a magnification of me.” “I’d thought: ‘What does this room need me to be?’ If I’m a jester, they won’t notice that I’m effeminate,” he says. Slowly morphing from punter to performer, it wasn’t until he was in his 20s that Gateau made his drag debut, but he had been honing the art of being someone else since he was a child, hiding his queerness from his religious family. ![]() Thankfully, something of an escape route had showed itself, via a fabulous weekly disco and cabaret night in Brighton by the name of Dynamite Boogaloo. By week two he was already over it: “I thought, ‘This is hell!” But he persevered until graduation. Returning to the UK to attend secondary school, it was another obsession – US TV shows such as Ally McBeal – that saw him apply to study law at Sussex University. “As opposed to a normal rehearsal process, we’re actually devising first, asking: ‘Where does this sit for you?’”īorn George Ikediashi in west London, Gateau was raised in Nigeria, where he soaked up the sounds of his parents’ diva-heavy record collection, fostering early obsessions with Whitney Houston and Dolly Parton. “We’ve been talking about how the pronouns work – does it hold their identities?” asks Gateau, who is evidently thrilled not just to be passing on a role that means so much to him, but also by the idea of taking his actors’ lives into consideration. Le Gateau Chocolat as Duckie at the Edinburgh festival, 2018. Instead, it will be shared by two young actors, both non-binary and one neurodiverse, with aspects of the part adjusted accordingly. Following acclaimed stints everywhere from London’s Southbank Centre to the Fringe World festival in Perth, Australia, Gateau is now stepping down from the lead role for its festive run at Manchester’s Home theatre. His fingernails, painted an iridescent shade of blue, flash in the sunlight as the cabaret star, opera singer and all-round entertainment powerhouse praises his tiny team and smiles.įirst imagined in 2015 – in part to offer comfort to his young niece, who had recently moved to the UK from Nigeria and was struggling to settle in, and in part upon realising that a drag queen’s natural audience is a gaggle of excitable kids – Duckie is a radical reimagining of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Ugly Duckling. No standards for service at Le Chocolat.we were cringing at the owners flippant behavior towards her customers.I n a big, bright rehearsal room at Southwark’s Unicorn Theatre, Le Gateau Chocolat is giving feedback to the new cast of his revolutionary children’s production, Duckie. No need to spend our money where we were clearly uncared for and unwelcome. There are plenty of other places on central avenue that would be pleased to see me and my husband walk in ( we are no strangers in this neighborhood) and greet us with an appropriate professional// friendly demeanor and take our money with happiness and pleasantry. As for yesterday my husband and I looked at each other after waiting for this woman owner to even glance our way.and just said " lets go". Disgusting! I didnt even dare tell my husband that one day on my own I ventured here for a coffee and was treated in the exact same way by this owner. Not to mention thst there was no one in the quaint space besides the 4 of us and a baby. We didnt get a greeting nor a " one moment I"ll be right with you" or even a look our way. We waited a few minutes to be acknowledged. We entered and the owner was in middle of the store chatting with a woman with a baby in a stroller. ![]() day date we dont ttpically get yo share as my husband is at work usually. Upon our return home to 5towns we decided to treat ourselves to a fancy coffee break and we chose Le Chocolat. My husband took off from work to take me to a drs appt in the city.
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