A cast of drag kings and queens have been summoned to a West End stage to perform a whodunnit. Will anyone get out alive? For the first 10 minutes, I wasn’t sure. The parody felt broad, the jokes broader still. “Lord von Fistenberg treated me to a big shiny pearl necklace!”: it’s like Mrs Brown’s Boys with more face paint. But there’s no resisting the exuberance of Death Drop. Soon, as its cast of pop starlets, tweedy squires and tabloid hacks assemble, and the phone lines are cut, and the roads blocked, this “Dragatha Christie” mystery exerts a grip – of the comedic, if not the suspense, variety.
If the cross-dressing has no influence on the unfolding plot, its impact is felt in the cartoonish character of the undertaking. Supposedly, we’re in a stately home on Tuck Island, where a motley collection of guests arrive to celebrate Charles and Di’s 10th wedding anniversary. In fact, we’re in panto-land, where, even in the face of a fatal threat, there’s time for a whole scene written in tongue-twisters or an impromptu performance of I’m Too Sexy by Right Said Fred.
Among the caricatures on display, Drag Race star Courtney Act is a Kylie-alike diva, forever feigning reluctance to sing, Kemah Bob a priapic film-maker, and LoUis CYfer fantastic as a blithering shire Tory in the Johnson mould. (“I couldn’t kill anyone, not with these soft Conservative hands!”) The action is just as lurid: one set piece finds northern housemaid Brie (writer Holly Stars: a scene-stealer) swinging a pooey loo-brush around for outré effect. And this is a murder mystery in which the dead have a habit of rising again, or delivering long perorations – or indeed songs – before they finally expire.
It’s baggy, it overruns, and it doesn’t know how to end. There’s no jeopardy – but if we don’t care whether someone lives or dies, we enjoy the baroque ways (shades of Improbable’s Theatre of Blood here) in which Stars’ script dispatches them. Scalped by a ninja, anyone? Poisoned by a crispy pancake? Dame Agatha might have bridled – but for West End audiences, it’s rollicking good fun.
