Number 1 2020

Chow Chee Beng, Mark Lee, starts the year on a sour note when the company’s New Year’s Eve dinner ends with a retrenchment letter in his hand. As the countdown to midnight fills the room, his wife Marie, Gina Tan, drops the big news: she’s pregnant with their second child. With Chinese New Year looming, Chee Beng clears his desk and heads into a shaky job hunt, facing a string of dead ends and failed interviews. A tenacious recruitment agent pushes him toward one last chance, hinting that selling the house and car could fund a fresh start. When he lands an interview, he meets Fa Ge, Henry Thia, the unapologetically blunt owner of the nightclub Number 1, who bypasses the usual screening and ushers Chee Beng straight into the club life. It’s here that Chee Beng discovers a world he didn’t know existed in Singapore: a drag queen nightclub run by a tight-knit troupe known as the Queens Brotherhood.

The Queens Brotherhood comprises five performers who carry the show on their shoulders: Unicorn, Tiny, Italy, Money, and Pearl. Gadrick Chin plays Unicorn, Kenneth Chia is Tiny, Darius Tan is Italy, Jaspers Lai is Money, and Kiwebaby is Pearl. Chee Beng watches as they juggle talent with survival, and the club’s energy quickly pulls him in. The life behind the spotlight isn’t glamorous: Unicorn is a soldier who went AWOL, later arrested by the military police, and the other performers fight stigma and financial pressures just to keep a roof over their heads. Chee Beng is asked to step in for Unicorn when the group is short on bodies, a responsibility he accepts mainly to keep his housing and car loans from piling up.

Behind the scenes, the club’s harsh realities begin to surface. The landlord Teo Chew Phoenix, Cassandra See, pushes Chee Beng hard—she invites him into a world where hard drinking is a social glue, and she doesn’t shy away from tough consequences. He wakes up the next day at Pearl’s house, learning why Pearl chose the nightclub life and hearing about the prejudice drag performers face from society. As Chee Beng becomes more integrated with the cast, he finds himself torn between his old life and this new community that welcomes him in ways his previous world could not.

During a live show, a misstep with the instrumental track forces Pearl to hesitate, and Chee Beng steps up to save the moment by singing live. The moment reveals a raw, human side to the act and to Chee Beng himself, who begins to see the performance as more than just a paycheck. After their first live act, audiences demand more authenticity, insisting that the performers sing live rather than lip-sync. The moment goes viral when a stream featuring the Queens Brotherhood—titled by viewers and fans—captures a poignant save by a viewer named Happy Polla, turning their routine into something that transcends the club and reaches a wider audience.

Public attention brings opportunity and pressure in equal measure. Chee Beng’s rising popularity helps him out-earn Pearl, shifting the balance of power and provoking tension backstage. A confrontation crescendos, revealing the fragility of their fragile family-made family. Teo Chew Phoenix then exposes Chee Beng to his own family as a drag performer, prompting him to quit Number 1 and even sell his house and car to shore up his financial responsibilities. Still, the bond among the performers remains strong, and Chee Beng returns to the stage to help raise funds for an elderly home, showing that his new life has ties that bind him to his old one.

Marie and her sister Judy, Caryn Cheng, stumble upon Chee Beng performing once more, and a heated argument follows. Marie’s labor begins in the heat of the moment, and the group—Chee Beng, the Queens Brotherhood, and Teo Chew Phoenix’s circle—races to the delivery room. In a turning point that seems almost cinematic in its gravity, Marie gives birth to twins, a boy and a girl, with Chee Beng and the rest of the troupe helping bring the babies into the world. The film closes on a note of triumph and tenderness: Chee Beng continues to perform on stage, while his twins and his growing family fill the front row with pride and joy, signaling a new chapter that blends love, resilience, and art.