Shows
The Fast and the Fabulous
Summer Knights
Carlotta’s Priscilla Show
The Sound of Music
The Wizard of Oz
The Rocky Horror Drag Show
Scream Queens
The Glamazons, comprised of Summer Salt, Millie Poppins and Ripley Waters, first show! The show was based on girls ‘cruising’ in their cars and featured an entertaining soundtrack with the likes of Grace Jones, Lady Gaga and Geri Halliwell.
The show incorporated innovative visual effects that had to be seen to be believed, and multimedia elements including a fabulously naughty video clip thanks to their wonderful sponsors Soleil Tanning on Oxford St.
Produced by Summer Salt, with amazing costumes by Millie Poppins and slick music and choreography by Ripley Waters, the team managed to combine their talents to create a unique, funny and very camp show for the midnightshift’s varied mix of regular patrons and the scores of new kids hitting the scene.
Wednesday nights in late 2008 brought a variety night unlike any other to the midnightshift on Oxford St.
Summer Salt and Dan Knight hosted the hysterical ‘Summer Knights’ from 9pm, a night designed to get people off their bums and off the internet, interacting in real life with lots of laughs and smiles, rather than lols and 
s.
During the show’s 12 week run, audiences saw the locals along with hot scene stars, and anyone who signed up through the Facebook group battle it out in pie eating, What’s in Summer’s Box, Cream Yourself (cream pie throwing) and the ever popular jelly wrestling competition!
Summer Knights was a breath of fresh air to the midnightshift and Wednesdays haven’t been the same since!
Now featuring Summer Salt, Carlotta’s Priscilla Show has it all! With an array of amazing & spectacular costumes which can only be described as out of this world! Carlotta and her cast of the ‘Original Priscillas’ upon which the movie and stage show ‘Priscilla Queen of the Desert’ is based, feature Australia’s best drag entertainers. Carlotta’s Priscilla Show is the only show of its kind touring the Australian club circuit, and has given Summer the chance to work with legendary drag divas such as Keren St James, Robyn Lee and the ever-fabulous Julia Sommers and Jenna Stevens. With production numbers ranging from ‘All That Jazz’ to ‘I Am What I Am’, spot numbers imitating Bette Midler, Cher, Diana Ross and Kylie Minogue, Summer and the ‘girls’ present a magical night from an era that Carlotta pioneered in the 60′s at ‘Les Girls’ in Sydney’s Kings Cross. The show takes audiences on a journey that would have them believing they were in a Las Vegas showroom; feathers, sequins, headdresses, bikini clad showgirls, everything you would expect to see and a few inches more!
In January 2007, Summer began her career as a showgirl in the cast of the Temporarily Reinstated Erskineville Amateur Theatrical Society. TREATS also consisted of the legendary Mitzi Macintosh and two other new girls on the block, Carmen Geddit and Millie Poppins. Starring on a night known at Best of Thursdays, they performed three 20 minute mini-productions of previous drag shows that had made Thursday nights at the Imperial Hotel a smash hit. The first show to premiere was the drag-rendition of The Sound of Music.
Beginning with Mitzi playing Frauline Maria praying for the strength to manage the baron’s children, the three young girls enter her room frightened by the storm outside. In an attempt to calm them, Maria tells them about a few of her favourite things. However the naughty schoolgirls strip out of their nighties, revealing laced corsets and a lot of leg, managing to transform the scene into one of devilish debauchery.
The rest of the show was a fun filled romp of camp comedy and bright glittering costumes. With Summer playing one of the children in the early scenes and Mother Superior in a hilarious scene with twisted dialogue, the show finished with a disco version of Climb Every Mountain and applause filling the Imperial’s Cabaret Bar.
The second instalment from TREATS was a hilarious drag version of the eternal classic The Wizard of Oz. Opening with Dorothy being greeted by Summer, playing the ethereal good witch Glinda, Dorothy learns that she must find her own way to the Wizard but can follow a golden yellow brick road to guide her.
Dorothy sets off on a journey and meets some twisted and colourful characters. The first of which is a dopey scarecrow made of straw. Explaining his desire to have a brain, the scarecrow dances along to Aretha Franklin’s Think, with Summer playing one of the crows (Russell to be precise). With fabulous choreographed dance scenes and creative music choices, the show was a hit with the famous tin man performing Dusty Springfield’s Anyone Who Had A Heart and Summer playing the part of the cowardly lion in full costume to Cher’s Strong Enough.
As the Emerald City slowly appears on the horizon, the audience is wowed with a full cast performance of Whitney Houston’s Step by Step. The finale was always a showstopper with the crowds of the Imperial.
Completing the line up on Thursday nights at the Imperial was the infamous Rocky Horror drag show. With glitzy costumes and a fantabulous storyline to boot, the show was an instant hit. To make the production all the more interesting, the cast of 4 played 6 different characters and there wasn’t even a Rocky in sight!
Summer played Brad Majors who gets caught up in a world of transvestites and sexual promiscuity in the extreme. Brad encounters many an adventure, from being stripped on stage to being caught in sticky situations among the shadows. Summer also portrayed the role of the incestuous housemaid Magenta. With sexual antics and outrageous outfits galore, Magenta kept audiences captivated with her sultry attitude.
The Rocky Horror Drag Show was action-packed, incorporating many of the songs from the movie, from Toucha Toucha Toucha Touch Me and Sweet Transvestite through to a glorious disco remix of the Time Warp for the big finale.
With Oxford St drag shows turning into a monotonous monopoly, the grandmother of drag, Ms Cindy Pastel was appointed to shake up the scene with an outrageous production in June 2007. With her partner in crime, Ms Venda Machine, Cindy asked the up and coming Summer Salt to star in their newest show.
After weeks of meetings, briefings and the occasional bitch-fight, the girls settled on a show based on the life of Joan Crawford and the movie Mommie Dearest. With well-rehearsed dance shows taking over Oxford St, Cindy saw the need for a return to the drag style of old, where shows weren’t as focused on choreographed dance routines and top 40 music, but more on spontaneous art and story-telling. Utilising innovative tools such as video production, the Cindy and Venda played the role of the villainous Joan Crawford, and Summer played her abused daughter Christina.
The show was infamous for its shocking and scenes and confronting themes, drawing a large audience week after week who came to see the freak show. It told the story of Joan who was a renowned actress and social figure of the time, but who (as depicted in the film) was a horrible mother who often abused her adopted daughter Christina behind closed doors. The show was both hilarious and scary at once, incorporating props such as kilos of Ajax powder and countless coathangers when recreating the famous ‘No wire hangers!’ scene, not to mention the odd blood capsule. Some cast members suffered the occasional cut, while Summer even sported a black-eye after one particularly intense show! Scream Queens was a highly controversial experiment and was by no means a ‘conventional’ success, but it brought in the crowds and kept audiences on their toes week after week, and therefore fulfilled its goal.