The most recent winner of RuPaul’s Drag Race UK, Ginger Johnson bursts onto the Edinburgh fringe scene with a bang. Literally.
Ginger’s ‘blowing off’ is the drag star’s attempt to become braver by performing as many Evel Knievel-esque daring acts in an hour as her tiny Pleasance stage will fit. She wants to become ‘the UK’s most dangerous woman’ and is determined to do so- in the campest way possible.
Ginger is clearly a seasoned entertainer. She manages to keep her voice just below the level of a shout from start to finish, and belts out two big numbers for us with ease. However, humour-wise it doesn’t crack me up. Ginger is very animated but isn’t joke funny to me.
She relies more on physical comedy, which is fine but not what I would choose. If I’m going to laugh at a fart at this point in the Fringe there better be something else going on to make it funny. Unfortunately, for Ginger this is the destination of many a joke, rather than a quick pitstop to somewhere more scenic.
Coming around to her stunts, they are about as much as one could easily accomplish on the really very wee stage she was on. Very serviceable, as is the whole show really. It’s fine. A bit of excitement of a Thursday afternoon, but I’m not sure how much more there is to it than that. As she says herself, Ginger is a bigwig in the drag world but I’m not quite sure this performance lived up to her acclaim.
Ginger Johnson Blows Off!, Pleasance Courtyard, 18:30, until August 24th.
https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/ginger-johnson-blows-off
Latharna Imlah
