Flicking through the hefty Fringe brochure, you can’t help but search for the familiar, whether it’s a name you’ve seen on the telly or maybe the promise of hearing your favourite artist’s songs in a show. Reading the description of Sugar, names like Chappell Roan, Lady Gaga and Dua Lipa will send out a kind of Bat-Signal to every queer pop enthusiast walking the streets of Edinburgh this summer. However, those behind this genre-melding cabaret hope to have created something weightier with this show which stars Melbourne-based multi-disciplinary performance artist Tomáš Kantor.

‘We follow me, a genderqueer twink who figures out that there’s maybe some money to be made on the side from their art,’ says Kantor of Sugar’s premise. ‘We jump in at the top of the show with Sugar finding a sugar daddy, and setting up that they’re going undercover and they’re going to write this cabaret. The audience is Sugar’s confidant through the highs and lows.’

Written by Ro Bright (creator of 2016’s critically acclaimed Daffodils) and directed by Kitan Petkovski, Sugar explores intersecting themes of sexuality, gender identity and sex work. ‘I go full Lady Gaga House Of Gucci method-acting for my art, and the process is definitely much rockier than the Pretty Woman fantasy I wield at the beginning and reference throughout.’

Kantor’s use of ‘I’ plays into the show’s meta-narrative. ‘There’s this interplay between Sugar and Tom when Sugar takes over and leaves Tom behind at points. But the show is really stacked with laughs. So I think when you get to the penultimate moments where there’s a heavy dose of reality, we kind of earn that turn.’ This thin line between comedy and drama is one walked by many Fringe performers. But what is its function here? ‘I think that comedy is such an incredible way to bring an audience on-side with things that feel more taboo or inaccessible. If you can laugh about something, then you can also break down those walls around it.’

To this end, it was important for the team behind Sugar that the central subject of sex work was approached without judgement. ‘It’s an incredibly valid means of production and income for so many people, and for queer people especially,’ Kantor attests. ‘Our thesis is more around how queerness is at odds with the requirements of certain transactional relationships: what is someone willing to concede or diminish for the sake of capitalism?’

In the true spirit of cabaret performance, Kantor sings and plays various instruments to tell Sugar’s story. ‘With cabaret, you just have everything at your disposal; choosing when we go out into the audience, when you bring someone up, when you choose to break into song, how you do that. It’s just so much fun.’

While there are no original songs, queer pop anthems have been carefully selected to prop up the narrative and engage younger audiences. ‘Pop music can speak to a generation, as well as an individual. It’s a powerful tool.’ Even if it is simply used to get this show’s intended audience through the door, it’s a worthwhile device, particularly if it can reach young people navigating their own way with gender identity or sexuality. ‘I would just love people to take away the idea that living authentically and fully without apology for who you are is always the best way,’ Kantor concludes. ‘It may be messy sometimes, but in the end that’s always going to be the most expansive way of living your life.’

Sugar, Assembly Checkpoint, Wednesday 30 July–Sunday 24 August, 4.20pm.