Wilderness Festival in Cornbury Park is well-known as a music festival with a bit more creature comfort than Glasto. Celebs relax to house DJs in immaculate tents put up by Veuve Clicquot and Audi, while a secret 18+ area called The Riddle, new for this year, clearly took its inspiration from the Saltburn birthday party – lots of places to hide behind trees, a broken bed covered in grass, a Mirabeau van, etc. I loved it there.
However, it’s also gained a reputation as having one of the best Queer arts programs of any mainstream festival in the UK, thanks in large part to the House of Sublime, which provides many of the pinnacle moments of the weekend. With takeovers from iconic LGBTQ+ nightlife hosts MIMIs, Queer House Party, Cocoa Butter Club and Pinky Promise, Wilderness have created a haven for club kids to run riot in a seductive, intimate venue, tucked into a particularly gorgeous bit of the English countryside.
The highlight of the House of Sublime’s program is undoubtedly the Haus of Fatale cabaret show which takes place twice on the Saturday evening, followed by the accompanying club night, Fatalism. Queues for both stretch to the end of the central cricket field (yes, Wilderness has a cricket field), as spots in the audience are so highly sought after.
The person behind all this is burlesque legend Missy Fatale, the House of Sublime’s creative director. Online and on stage, Missy (real name Hayley Harvey), is typically decorated head-to-toe in jewels, feathers and tassels. With long black hair and vampy red lipstick, she looks strikingly like Bettie Page. But when we meet behind the House of Sublime at this year’s festival to talk in real life, she’s wearing a simple black camisole and shorts, and minimal makeup. She’s in full stage director mode.
“We champion inclusivity, freedom of expression, Queer artists, anything art house. But it’s all just really, really the best of the best high end acts,” she tells me.
It’s amazing what you can do when all your friends work at The Box and Torture Garden. The show this year was opened by aptly named Jessabelle Thunder, an incredible burlesque artist who shimmied off an all orange fringe outfit to Tony Quattro’s Fuerza. Even her thong was dripping in fringe.
This was followed by aerial and fire breathing performances, (one of which saw the performer hang by his lip from a fiery chain – he’d earlier told me he ran away to the circus in 1999), stunning vocals from Gia Re, a Cruella de vil-esque leopard print strip tease by Fallon Dee, and Mouse from The Box doing… the thing Mouse does (if you don’t like surprises, don’t sit on the front row).
Holding the whole thing together is the formidable emcee and host Busola, a non-binary performer whose cheek bones and wit will slice you right open. They changed from thigh high PVC boots and latex lingerie to a loose-fitting R&B shirt and trousers over the course of the show.
I ask them how cabaret performance helped them find their gender identity. “I look back on how I grew up and how I felt inside and how I never leaned more towards being a boy or being a girl… I was like, I’m in the middle, but I wouldn’t say that I’m androgynous. I’m something completely different. And I found that in my art via my expression on stage. I don’t have to solidify or identify myself. It can change and it can grow, and growth needs space.
“What I love about cabaret is that, whether it’s old school, whether it’s neo, whether it’s burlesque, I can be as free as I want to be. There are no barriers. There are no boundaries. Some of the shit I get away with is honestly wild [NB: Busola does a singalong chant about consent in the show]. But it’s all in the name of art, and it’s all in the name of making people feel something, and the way that we can bring people together through intersectionality.”
One of the greatest aspects of the Haus of Fatale, and the House of Sublime more generally, is how it creates such a valuable platform for diversity in performance. Most of the performers are people of colour and many are Queer. Uplifting those people is central to the mission of the tent.
“The reason why this is absolutely integral in our industry is due to reparations,” says Busola. “There has been discrimination, denigration, a whole heap of oppression and suppression existentially and internally because of things that have happened in the past. Now, the only way we can try and move forward is by knowing about them, addressing them, and making acts of change. That starts with representation. It starts with visibility.”
After the cabaret comes the club night Fatalism, managed by stylist Fara Galaxy, which organisers hope to bring to London later this year. This year the headliner was Mistress Eva Oh, one of the world’s most famous Dommes, inviting guests onto the stage for playful kink displays. This bit is standard fetish club rules – no phones, ask for consent, etc. By the end of the night the Torture Garden cage was full of delighted and inspired women slut dropping off the bars (myself included).
“Whether it’s the show or the club, we want to challenge your way of thinking, surprise you, inspire you. Show you something you’ve never seen before and make you leave having changed a small part of you,” says Hayley.
Basically, a day at Wilderness is like a really good day in London: yoga, coffee, bookshop wander, political debate, snooze, Queer cabaret, kinky club night. And you don’t have to take a night bus to get home.
Early bird tickets for Wilderness 2025 go on sale this Saturday August 10.
Follow the author on Instagram @iamhelenthomas
