The second show of Sink the Pink’s queer Christmas trilogy is modelled on the style of sci-fi B-movies, films that by design are hammy, scrappy and over the top. But while Escape from Planet Trash is knowingly bad (“Careful, it could be a plot” / “Good, we could do with one of those”), it stumbles before it reaches so-bad-it’s-good territory. Instead, it heels are stuck firmly in at the mark of palpably unenergetic and groan-worthily unfunny.
Drag star Ginger Johnson has spliced together a blooper reel of a show – minus the humour – for this musical misadventure. It’s 2050 and a pair of space explorers (Mairi Houston and Mahatma Khandi) find Johnson and her son (David Cumming) as the only humans left on Planet Trash, formerly known as Earth. After centuries of human destruction, all that’s left of home is a ramshackle landscape of poisonous sewer pipes, bin bags and vengeful ball-bobbing turkeys.
There is a certain, if limited, absurd pleasure to the show’s bizarre unpredictability. Johnson leans valiantly into panto humour, wading through the crap for camp meta-winks and dirty jokes, and Cumming tries to lift the energy with his gymnastic facial expressions, while Clancy Flynn’s celestial lighting illuminates how good the show could be.
But the majority of this production is severely starved of oxygen. Songs are endured rather than enjoyed, awkward silences suggest every third line is forgotten – this isn’t helped by uneven sound levels – and the cast deliver their dialogue so devoid of energy it’s as if they’d rather be elsewhere. After an interpretive dance battle with giant turkeys and an obligatory 17th turn of the rotating stage to remind us we’re in space, I can’t help but feel the same.
• At the Pleasance, London, until 22 December.
