Still, the best performers elevate the genre’s good-humored entertainment into an art form. Lip-syncing is harder than it looks: Since the audience is aware of the illusion, it requires the performer to not just mimic but subtly exaggerate a singer’s physicality. While L’Artishow has some highly gifted cast members, like Galipette, who imitated Ms. Dion with spot-on mouth distortions, Chez Michou remains home to the most impressive transformiste craft, with performances perfected down to the smallest head tilt. Le Coquelicot, one of Chez Michou’s superb lip-syncers, could almost be mistaken for Ms. Dion.

A modern drag sensibility isn’t entirely absent from the Paris cabarets, however. At Madame Arthur, which has existed on and off since the 1940s, you’ll find a younger crowd and idiosyncratic, fully formed characters like Charly Voodoo, a charismatic pianist with a deadpan manner and a minuscule waist, and the accordionist Oiseau Joli. Unlike at Chez Michou and L’Artishow, company members sing and play music live, and the shows have a new overall theme every week or so.

Outside these venues, French drag — as opposed to the current American scene — is still far from the mainstream. No local drag queen has achieved widespread recognition on the national stage, and opportunities to make a living are scarce. Many drag events remain marketed mainly to the L.G.B.T. Q. community through social media.

Venture into the drag night life, however, and you will find a subculture as vibrant and welcoming as any in France today. The joie de vivre at most events I attended was practically un-Parisian, with no neutral colors or existential gloom in sight. Several organizers estimated in interviews that the number of local drag queens has at least quadrupled in the past two years, with an influx of so-called “baby drags,” and the scene is alive with a sense of giddy creativity.