Interview | Ben Bunce talks about ‘Stunning’, the new revue show at London’s iconic Windmill

London’s West End is one of the world’s top entertainment districts, where critically acclaimed musicals and plays jostle alongside each other to attract theatregoers to fill their seats.

In the heart of all this action lies The Windmill, an iconic venue famous for its nude ‘tableaux vivants’, where female performers acted as ‘living statues’ so as to get around censorship rules.

The Windmill’s story was told and immortalised in the 2005 Judi Dench-starring film Mrs Henderson Presents, but in recent years it’s been operating as a gentlemen’s lap dancing club, and is currently appealing the decision to revoke its ‘sexual entertainment venues’ licence.

In a bid to find alternative revenue streams, The Windmill’s owners were looking to diversify the entertainment on offer when they were approached by London-based performer Ben Bunce with the idea to stage the venue’s first revue show in 50 years.

Ben, who has performed in West End shows in drag before, has long admired The Windmill and the revue as an art form, and co-created Stunning with Joel Marvin and Gary Murphy as a way to allow audiences to relive the West End’s glory days. He leads a trio of drag queens, with five dancers completing the cast.

The show had its first outing last Sunday and runs for three more weeks, though Ben is hoping this is just the start for Stunning, as he tells Attitude.

Firstly, what exactly is a revue show?

The revue, in a nutshell, is the kind of show that you see in Paris where it’s not a musical or a play.

It’s very visual, so there’s just a very loose storyline that connects all the numbers together.

These shows started out with tableaux vivants, which is where there would just be dancers placed around a set in quite extravagant costumes. As time has gone by, that’s become a bit more animated, which is what we see today.

And revues are a big part of The Windmill’s history, aren’t they?

The Windmill used to do revues, which is what the film Mrs Henderson Presents is about, and they did that through the war, so it was a place in London where people at the time used to go for light relief, I guess.

It’s a family-run business, and over time it changed and they stopped doing shows and they started going into stripping, which they’ve been doing for quite a long time now.

So, it’s a really old, historic venue, and I’ve always had my eye on it and been fascinated by it. I have a passion for revue shows and cabaret, and thought that it was time to put that venue back on the map in the West End as a show house, essentially.

We’re hoping to use this first run to find out what the audiences think, with a view to running it more regularly and potentially having a residency.

What kind of audience does it attract?

It’s open to all, but really suits people who are going to see shows like Briefs, Kinky Boots and Priscilla, or burlesque shows in the West End.

Our show starts at 7pm and is split out into three 20-minute sections. It’s quite a relaxed environment, and we’ve got slots for guest artists to come on, so it’s a really mixed bag and hopefully it will be different every night.

And after the main show, we’ve got a DJ so it becomes more of a club environment for another two or three hours.

You had Christina Bianco perform during one of the guest slots during opening night. What kinds of acts are you hoping to book in the future?

We’ve included those slots with a view that if Stunning does kick off and become big, it’s a platform for all of those interesting acts that come to London.

Contestants from RuPaul’s Drag Race that come over here, maybe, or upcoming artists, singers, comedians… So that we continue with our show but in between there’s a bit of something else.

The Windmill was famous for nude revue shows and you’ve talked about how it’s now a strip joint, so is that a part of Stunning too or are you steering clear of that?

There’s no nudity, it’s quite high fashion and visual, it’s not grungy and stripper-y at all.

Everyone will be fully clothed and there will be potentially some topless — but probably from the drag queens and not the ladies! Fake topless, obviously!

What kind of performers are going to be part of the Stunning segments?

There’s going to be three drag queens, I’m actually one of them, and then there’ll be two others who I met in La Cage aux Folles in the West End.

We started doing gigs back in the day at Madame Jojo’s with a group called the Transisters, with a lot of success, before we all went on to do different productions.

So there’s the three of us, and then we have three female and two male performers, so it’s a really mixed bag.

Previously, revue shows have been very much geared around women being objects and being nude, which is great, but we want to bring that to 2018 and have men and drag queens do that too, to make it a bit more diverse.

How long have you had this idea? Was The Windmill on board with the idea as soon as you pitched it to them?

100 per cent on board. They’re very keen to invest in something else, so they really want to push it to see if it can work for them.

There’s been no pushback whatsoever, they were very very supportive. Stunning is very much a celebration of the venue, so it starts with some footage of The Windmill from back in the day, and the first section of the show is more old school, referencing what it was.

Then we get to the modern day, and we finish with something that’s a little more out there. We’re using projection and video so it’s not just about the movement on stage; it’s a bit more immersive for the audience.

Stunning performs at The Windmill on Sundays until 16 December. Tickets are available from £10.

Images by Liza Maria Dawson