Beloved drag queen Martha Graham Cracker is back to performing sold-out shows after battle with leukemia

After taking more than a year off from performing to undergo leukemia treatment, beloved Philly drag queen Martha Graham Cracker is back, cancer-free, and ready to flirt with fans at a spate of upcoming shows.

Martha — who has been played by Pig Iron Theatre cofounder Dito van Reigersberg since 2005 — performed her first show back on Friday to a packed house at B. West, Franky Bradley’s next-door sister venue. She has another sold-out show scheduled for March 22, and a third performance scheduled for July 13 at Union Transfer. That one has already sold two-thirds of its tickets, said Victor Fiorillo, senior reporter at Philadelphia Magazine and Martha’s pianist-manager.

“As much as my fans might have missed me, I missed them more,” said van Reigersberg, who was diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia in December 2022. “Martha is a place where I get to fire on all cylinders, which has been really exciting to come back to.”

Despite the special occasion, Friday’s show at B. West was business as usual for the Martha Graham Cracker Cabaret, which performed a mix of show tunes, Nirvana covers, and Annie Lennox deep cuts while van Reigersberg slinked across the venue in a platinum blond wig and a satin, floor-length robe.

Van Reigersberg sang live as Martha draped herself over the bar — and at least two seemingly unsuspecting men — during renditions of “Sway” and “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?” Each time, the crowd egged Martha on, asking for more jokes, more songs, and even more heavy-handed flirtation.

“Martha can make a very uncomfortable situation feel comfortable. She’ll spot the most uncomfortable person in the crowd and immediately bring them out of their shell,” said Allison Sacks, who has seen the Martha Graham Cracker Cabaret perform “dozens” of times.

Sacks has been on the receiving end of van Reigersberg’s crowd work before: Sacks and her wife got married at City Hall in 2016, and Martha gave them their first dance as newlyweds during a show at FringeArts. Fake snow fell, said Sacks, while Martha sang the Sonny and Cher classic “I Got You Babe.”

Others in the audience were Martha Graham Cracker Cabaret newbies, such as Quinton Meil, who had become a fan after discovering Martha’s campy conceptual album Lashed But Not Leashed during the pandemic. Meil scoured the internet for last-minute tickets to Friday’s show, ultimately buying them through Instagram DMs from a man who lived in Connecticut and claimed to know a band member.

“I’m excited that I have no idea what to expect,” said Meil, who held several seconds of seductive eye contact with Martha while she sang Lennox’s “The Gift.”

During Friday’s performance, van Reigersberg talked about his leukemia recovery with a mix of guarded honesty, gratefulness, and humor, pausing to thank “medical science” and his favorite nurse, Priscilla, before jokingly asking a bald man in a kilt to go on a date with him.

“It’s been a while, but I’ve landed back where I belong,” van Reigersberg told the crowd. “I would’ve been here sooner, but I had some things to take care of.”

In reality, van Reigersberg spent the better part of 2023 tucked away from crowds. After his diagnosis in 2022, Fiorillo helped organize a stem-cell donation party to help van Reigersberg find a match for a bone marrow transplant — only a match never emerged, and van Reigersberg underwent three rounds of chemotherapy before receiving the necessary stem cells from an umbilical cord in March.

» READ MORE: Beloved drag queen Martha Graham Cracker diagnosed with leukemia, searching for stem cell donor

Afterward, van Reigersberg had to strengthen his immune system from scratch. Van Reigersberg spent most of his time recovering from frequent blood work, his one solace being the Wilma Theater, where the stage manager let him watch shows siloed away from the audience.

Van Reigersberg said recovery felt “like a full-time job. ... I missed making people laugh and feel things.”

Getting back into the swing of Martha Graham Cracker was both more and less difficult than Van Reigersberg expected. The cabaret has a lot of moving parts — a five-piece live band plus stand-up comedy — and a big reputation: Several in the crowd said their favorite Martha performances include when she headlined Dîner en Blanc in the rain and sang in an American flag dress during the 2016 Democratic National Convention.

“Even when I was at my healthiest, Martha was exhausting. … It’s like doing a triathlon,” said van Reigersberg, 51. “When you remember being 100%, your body has the impulse to do everything at 100%, but some days I only have 50% of the gas.”

Still, van Reigersberg said he didn’t feel rusty after the time off. After their first practice back on Thursday, his bandmates agreed.

“The band is tight. … Dito’s voice sounds great. It was just muscle memory,” said Fiorillo. “Not performing with Martha definitely left a void in our lives.”

Midway through the concert, Martha ripped off her robe to reveal a tight black dress with a thigh-high slit before leading the crowd in a sing-along to Macy Gray’s “I Try” alongside PJ Brown. From there, Martha dove into a mashup of the Eurythmics’ “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This),” “Seven Nation Army” by the White Stripes, and Sergei Rachmaninoff’s “Prelude in C-sharp minor.”

“You were worth the wait,” someone in the crowd shouted before Martha exited the stage. She was back once more, of course, to perform a jazzy rendition of “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina” from Evita.

“I’m back in my happy place,” said Brandi Davis, who has been attending Martha Graham Cracker Cabaret shows since 2012. “Unless lightning strikes me dead, I’ll always be front row for Martha.”