Borrowing her name from the famous cosmetics manufacturer – taking care to tweak the spelling to avoid litigation – Maybellene is a pre-shrunk, high-fashion, glamour-goddess for the new millennium. Camp-as-a-row-of-tents, her terrifically trivial fifteen-minute 'MGM-style' musicals are performed in the smallest theatre in town – a puppet booth.
Maybellene is nothing other than the head of an immaculately coiffured and made-up drag queen, perched on top of the body of a nine-inch fashion doll. Barbie, Cindy and Pippa all rolled into one. She lives in a world of sequins and spangles, love-hearts and flowers – lip-synching her way through a series of kitsch classics inside a miniature world where dreams really do come true.
Kitsch ‘n’ Synch Drama – one of Maybellene's two fabulous musical adventures – takes our heroine back to the 50s where, gloriously attired in a lilac gingham frock, a freak accident at the kitchen sink causes her to shrink and disappear down the plug hole. Catapulted through the U-bend and into an alternative universe, Maybellene finds herself in Umo – a stricken world which alien invaders have bleached of colour. But never fear, Maybellene comes to the rescue, giving the dull and dreary aliens a glamour overload, before marrying her diminutive Hollywood heartthrob in an all-singing, all-dancing, gold lame finale.
This human puppet show gave a daily injection of magic to audiences who pitched-up to see it in Maybellene's purpose-built tent in the Pleasance courtyard. London audiences will get the chance to meet Maybellene when the living fashion doll brings her unique brand of glamour to next year's International Mime Festival.