Some shows win new fans; some just please existing ones. UK Drag Race champ Ginger Johnson’s latest may fall into the latter category. If you thrilled to that telly success, this knockabout comedy show/spoof magic act might suffice as a close-quarters hit of the real thing. It has less to offer the rest of us. Yes, Ginger displays a raucous charm as she sings triumphal songs (“How does it feel to be in the presence of a big shot?”), gets amongst her crowd, and performs daredevil feats inspired by the human cannonball she saw as a child. But, while any one of those acts might fly in a cabaret context, in an hour-long solo show at Soho theatre, they feel over-exposed.
It needn’t be too big a problem that Johnson’s tricks (flatulence on fire; confetti cannon Russian roulette) are less than confounding. But that puts more pressure on the comedy than her crude patter can bear. “This show is all about farts,” she tells us at one point, which is dispiritingly close to the truth. Ginger’s brand of drag is closer to the end of the pier, to Les Dawson in a spangled catsuit, than to the sleek sass and glamour usually associated with the artform. Think less burlesque of femininity, more scatological panto dame. “I’m the shit,” she barks, “and no one’s gonna flush me down.”
It’s not subtle, then – although the light-touch deficit is corrected by Jen Smethurst in the silent role of Ginger’s long-suffering stage manager. Some beats of self-reflection are hit in the closing “emotional ballad”, How the Fuck Did I End Up Here? But, as with the framing narrative concerning her childhood love of derring-do, Johnson (Donald Marshall, when out of the catsuit) can’t help mugging and sending it all up. Drag Race devotees, and fart lovers, may find that this late-night, unapologetically daft hour of cod-circus theatrics takes them far enough. For the rest of us, Blows Off! – like Ginger’s human-cannonball heroine years ago, on her fatal final flight – falls a little short.
At Soho theatre, London, until 12 October
