Bianca Del Rio: Unsanitized ★★★

For the uninitiated, originally the winner of series six of RuPaul’s Drag Race USA, Del Rio has become a global drag superstar, selling out both Carnegie Hall and Wembley Stadium with her last tour.  In Unsanitized she hits the road again to provide a profanity-woven update on how the pandemic has impacted her, and the multitudes she despises.  Absolutely nobody emerges unscathed, as it’s been a tough couple of years.

Focusing on the frustration of not being able to perform during lockdown, Del Rio screams at the audience “What is a drag queen without a show?”  “A man!” she responds, before relating the various alternate roles – mortician, child carer, porn fluffer – that had to be assumed in order to keep the wolf from the door.  Each segment ends with the same reoccurring, pandemic-related punchline that hilariously punctuates the whole show. 

Assumed to be occupying the expensive seats, those sitting in the front row of the audience are each made to account for what they did during the pandemic to be worthy of such a privileged position.  Del Rio’s rhetoric here is as shockingly direct and filthy as it is funny, glibly destroying someone’s fashion choice by snidely describing their outfit as “electric beige”, before turning to twin sisters to accuse them of being in a Sapphic, incestuous relationship. 

The near-the-knuckle nature of some – indeed, most – of the material is recognised as Del Rio thumbs through her prop joke book.  “The lesbian jokes are on page two, just wait until I get to the Jewish jokes on page seven!” she quips.  And when she does, indeed, reach for the material on that page, this is where the humour moves from unmissable to off target.