PEACHES at the Drake, Friday, September 14. Rating: NNN
To promote her film Peaches Does Herself at TIFF, the Berlin-based Toronto expat took over all three floors of the Drake Hotel for a puzzling evening of transgressive raunch and electro punk. The film is based on her cabaret show, but this event was more performance art than theater, and didn’t bother with the narrative.
Instead of attempting to remount the pansexual love story, various elements of the full stage production popped up over the night, including various appearances by NYC cult stripper/comedian Sandy Kane (aka the Naked Cowgirl) and trans porn star Danni Daniels (who by the end of the night was wearing less than Kane).
As the action moved from room to room, there was a lot of waiting for the next bit to happen, and capacity issues meant that if you weren’t media you likely missed a good chunk of the performances. The heavy presence of photographers mixed with the Saturday night Drake Hotel crowd made it seem less like a celebration of sexuality than an excuse to gawk at nudity. On the other hand, the confusion (and in some cases fear) that a bare breasted 60-year old and a buck-naked amazonian transsexual provoked in this kind of situation might have been the point of the whole exercise.
