Ginger Johnson Blows Off ★★★★

Ginger Johnson is the reigning Drag Race UK champion, and known as a theatrical queen. Ditching the usual drag tropes, she builds her latest show around a supposed new career of daredevil. Starting small (trampolining after glugging Coke), her feats of derring-do get bigger and more ridiculous, ultimately involving being shot out from a cannon.

The show contains a couple of witty songs that Ginger has penned with Bourgeois & Maurice. Johnson sings about being a “big shot” following her Drag Race win last year, despite arriving on stage on a motorised scooter. Following a (planned) misadventure towards the end of the show, she wails “how the fuck did I end up here?”, though her (self-declared) emotional ballad ultimately becomes uplifting, not to mention silly.

It’s bawdy end-of-the-pier fun, enlivened with some real zingers. Describing the probability of getting shot in the face with tacks during one stunt, she says it’s one in three – the same likelihood as one of the Sugarbabes developing diabetes. Here’s to you Mutya! One-liners range from delightfully obvious (“this will go down in the anals of history” after fart-lighting fun) to esoteric (she wields her Drag Race winner’s sceptre “like a gay Gandalf”).

A seasoned and engaging performer, this queen understands her audience and how to work them. They know what to expect and Johnson delivers. Accompanied by her own version of Madge Allsop (the delightfully po-faced Jen), Johnson whips the audience into fervorous participation. She delights and terrifies in equal measure when she bounds into the crowd seeking unwilling “volunteers”.

Towards the end of her show, Johnson thanks the audience for taking time out from a near-cataclysmic world. And this certainly represents an hour of irreverent and escapist fun!