The Boy from Ballajura (Encore) by Drag/Burlesque performer Sam Williams
Connections Nightclub, 27th June 2025
65 minutes (no interval)

When a drag performer calls their latest show The Boy from Ballajura you fully expect a stream of gags about the horrors of life in the outer suburb from which they managed to escape (surely we weren’t going to get out of Connies without a joke about Emu Swamp, Ballajura’s main attraction).

Surprisingly, the absconder in question, Sam Williams, speaks fondly of growing up on the north-eastern edge of the Perth metropolitan area and, more significantly, enfolds his family in a lovingly nostalgic embrace. 

Indeed, the two stage personas Williams evolved to cope with life as a young gay man coming of age in a suburb where doing burn-outs passes as a peak cultural activity and realise his dream of a performing career were inspired by his Pink-worshipping sister and Holden Commodore-loving brother, which means his family are never far away no matter what boundaries his pushes (quite literally as Sam’s mum was in the audience at Connections).

In other words, the uber-blonde diva Alexis Armstrong and the black lippy-wearing punk rocker/stripper Karl Kayoss are not simply stage personas but pathways to his childhood, which he seems forever running back to even as he heads into uncharted new terrain. 

Amusingly, Alexis Armstrong popped out when Williams was living with his grandparents, a primal moment amplified by a high-energy lip-synch performance of Hannah Montana’s Best of Both Worlds that celebrates his love of pop princesses such as Britney Spears and Avril Lavigne and backed by four dancers who give this one-man show a surprising scale and physicality.

The second of his two personas, Karl Kayoss, has roots in his brother’s more hyper-masculine behavior, but blown up by this pop cultural magpie’s love for the World Wrestling Federation, especially The Undertaker, who Williams got to meet when they were in town last year (that I would like to have seen).

It is in this section of The Boy from Ballajura that Williams shows off his circus skills and his athleticism — he was a state-level gymnast and has certainly kept his form — injecting a physicality you don’t normally expect from a drag show. Again, it is not just a showcase for his skills but gives you insight into the many strands of his personal history.

While the portions of the show devoted to Alexis and Karl are explosive fun the most memorable and affecting parts of The Boy from Ballajura are when Williams removes the masks and comes out as himself — or, if you want to get all post-modern about this, adopts the stage persona of Samuel Carl Williams.

Sitting on the stool and wearing regulation street clothes, Williams tells the story of his fractured family — “My brother and sister were best friends, but my parents were not” — of his early love for a woman and of the death of his cherished stepfather, whose passing shook him up so profoundly it was the catalyst for him coming out (the hurt is communicated  by a moving lip-synch of Macklemore and Ryan Lewis’s Same Love). 

But even with all the slings and arrows the young Sam endured growing up in Ballajura and dealing with a father who one day just upped and left he does not cling to the trauma and is extremely forgiving of everyone in his life.  

While it is admirable that Williams doesn’t milk the hurt and the darkness — he leaves that for the songs — he does tend to hurry through the difficult material, as if he doesn’t want to be accused of over-egging the suffering. As the show evolves I hope he slows the pace and lets the audience absorb his story, rather than rushing on to the next song.

What he does capture well is the joy of his marriage to fellow drag performer Matthew, which he celebrates by lip-synching their wedding song, Ben Platt’s soaring love song In Case You Don’t Live Forever, which left all of us wiping away the tears (quite an achievement for a lip-synching drag performer).

Overall, The Boy From Ballajura is a nicely judged showbiz memoir, in which Williams balances family and backstages stories with the impossible-to-restrain urge to dress up, tell dirty jokes, entertain the audience and have a bloody good time, which was evident in this one-off Connections performance. I’m sure Alexis, Karl and Sam will be back. 

Try and stop them.

The Boy from Ballajura (Encore) was a one-night-only event.