"Even I'm Appalled"

By Katie Knowlton

Sherry Vine and her fabulous sparkly pink dress entertained to a full crowd at the Tabler Arts Center last Wednesday. The event, put on by the Stony Brook Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Alliance, was in celebration of Coming Out Day. An annual occurrence, Coming Out Day is a day of awareness for coming out and other LGBT related issues. Her mix of comedy and singing brought most of the audience to an uproarious laughter, even through the most dirty and vulgar parts of her act.

Sherry Vine, a drag queen from New York City who was recently featured on an episode of Project Runway, seemed a bit apprehensive about performing at a college, an environment quite different from her normal element, bars full of drunken queers. The apprehension wore away quickly though after several assurances from the crowd that they were there for the full Sherry Vine act, no matter how raunchy it would be.

And raunchy it was.

The beginning of her set was rather tame, with Sherry singing her own version of “When You’re Good to Mama” from the musical Chicago, making it ‘When You’re Good to Sherry,” which featured the phenomenal line, “When you’re stroking Sherry, Sherry’s stroking you.” This sort of frank reference to sexuality was to be a pillar of her act and became much more pronounced as the night went on. She promised, “Anything could happen tonight.”

All of the songs she sang were arrangements of existing songs. Most of them were simply new lyrics over the music of well known tunes. This turned the songs into odes to sexuality and slutiness. Her version of “Fergilicious” turned into a rap about how easy she was, same for her take on “4 Minutes” by Madonna and Justin Timberlake. She said it was about the perils of being a New York prostitute, but in the end it was about Sherry herself being the prostitute and only having “four minutes to make [the client] come.” The song also featured my favorite line from the evening, “Get it out/Get it up/Get it in my vagina.”

Raunchiness aside, Sherry showed that she had a strong voice and that her college years performing had paid off. She was extremely comfortable onstage. Between songs she did stand up and interacted heavily with the crowd. She flirted with several people, men and women. One man seemed rather uncomfortable about it and when he got up to leave, Sherry told him to look for her on Craigslist later. Most of the people she flirted with and talked to just went with the craziness that was happening, enjoying another aspect of her show.

Sherry was an outstanding performer who did not disappoint. Despite being out of her element on a college campus, she brought out her most racy material and was not afraid to interact with a crowd that skewed younger than her regulars.