Kate Butch says ‘spite’ inspired Edinburgh show Wuthering Shites
Kate Butch’s jukebox Kate Butch musical ‘Wuthering Shites’ is coming to the Edinburgh Fringe this year – so she tells PinkNews all about the show being billed as ‘If Mamma Mia! had a breakdown’.
“I’m a little bit addicted to Reddit,” Kate Butch tells PinkNews. “I just search in my name and am like, ‘Which teenager hates me today?’ It’s great. My therapist is cleaning up. My favourite is the imaginary [RuPaul’s] Drag Race seasons, when they do the little spreadsheets. And I always go home on the acting challenge but I win the ball.”
You wouldn’t know it from that answer, but the question PinkNews has posed to Kate Butch was, ‘How did the process of writing Wuthering Shites start?’
Kate Butch, best known for making top five of the fifth season of RuPaul’s Drag Race UK before being sent packing by DeDe Licious – more on that later – is really leaning into her namesake, by which we mean rinsing the Kate Bush connection for all it’s worth, and taking a jukebox musical of songs by the reclusive singer to the Edinburgh Fringe.
The answer to the question of how Wuthering Shites came to be did, in fairness, start out fairly on course, before it fell off track.
“When I started doing drag, I would do lip syncs of popular culture. I would do Gemma Collins lip syncs, but I never really did any Kate Bush songs despite being called Kate Butch, and people would be like, ‘Well, why? Why aren’t you doing any Kate Bush songs? Why have you got that name?’” she recalls, before revealing the true genesis of Wuthering Shites; spite.
“I thought, ‘I’m going to show you, you people. I’m going to do a whole hour using the hits of Kate Bush, with some stand up, with some singing, some lip syncing, everything all together. And you’ll never ask me to do another Kate Bush song. It’s a show out of spite. That’s that’s my advice to everyone. Go to the Edinburgh Fringe because you’re annoyed at other people and to annoy them.”
Spite or not, Wuthering Shites is really, really funny, PinkNews can confirm, having attended a pre-fringe preview and from the tidbits dropped by Butch during our interview.
There is, to start off, the strapline, ‘If Mamma Mia! had a baby with a nervous breakdown.” Then, there’s what Kate says next, which is this:
“The songs of Kate Bush, they’re not full of laughs, I think we could agree. Some of them are quite traumatic. But I use the audience to do a workshop of ‘Bush! The Musical’, which I’m trying to get to Broadway. How is it going to happen? I need help in every single way. Will I be able to put on this jukebox musical? Legally, ethically, morally, financially, emotionally?”
We’ll find that out at the Edinburgh Fringe, where Wuthering Shites is set to land at the end of July this year. It’s not, by any means, Kate’s first trip to the Scottish capital, but there’s a reason she keeps returning.
“Edinburgh is kind of like the Holy Grail of any comedian’s year. Everyone goes up, does new shows, old shows tests out bits and crucially goes and sees each other, which is one of my favourite parts,” she reveals.
After adding that her next show, post-Wuthering Shites is set to be called A Kate in the Hand is worth Two in the Bush (“Which could either be about proverbs and worldly wisdom or filthy dirty horrible sexual acts. It’s going to be about proverbs, probably”), the discussion turns to Kate’s run on Drag Race UK – and more specifically, whether she believes she was rightfully sent home.
To recap, Ms. Butch did well, and was finally awarded a win in episode seven, before being sent packing by Dede Licious (the drag sister of season three winner Krystal Versace), after Dede’s third time in the bottom, the following week. Did Kate deserve to hit the house?
“Well, I definitely had the worst makeover of the week. I couldn’t do my own makeup. How was I supposed to do someone else’s?”
Regardless, Kate (and the rest of the show’s viewers) felt, and perhaps still feel, that a bit of grace could be extended in her direction, what with season five having “like 16 non-elimination episodes“.
“I enjoyed the lip sync that I did,” she says. “I think I held my own against the fabulous Dede. But I also I think that because it was an episode for charity, maybe some charity could have been extended to those lip syncing…”
Despite that, Kate’s verdict on an All Stars return – or on one of the various Vs. The World franchises floating about – is a firm yes.
“It’s always nice to be on the telly!” she jokes. “They can only make so many episodes of University Challenge. I would take it a bit more seriously, hopefully there’d be prize money, and I could buy some nice outfits.
“I kind of went: ‘I’m going to have a nice time, I don’t think I’m gonna win’. The second Cara Melle walked in, I was like: ‘I want her to win.’ But I think I’d go back with a budget and some fighting spirit and less self doubt I reckon.”
Drag Race did, at least, teach Kate a few things about herself that she carries over into Wuthering Shites. “I think it does teach you fearlessness and conviction in what you’re doing. Every week is a different challenge. And sometimes it’s things that aren’t in your comfort zone, like putting on makeup, which, in hindsight, I should have thought was a fundamental part of doing Drag Race.”
Does Kate have any last teases for Wuthering Shites before she heads up to the Edinburgh Fringe? “It’s a one woman show!” she adds. “I’m still trying to find the one woman to do it.”
Tickets to Wuthering Shites by Kate Butch are available now. The play is 60 minutes long and runs from 31 July to 26 August at The Pleasance, Edinburgh.
