JADAR

★★★★☆

Send In The Clowns: A Little Flop of Horrors is an unabashedly outrageous romp teeming with hilarious gags, sexual proclivity, jaw-dropping vocals, and shining personalities. It’s part campy cabaret, part parodic musical, promising an unforgettable evening of drag, theatre, comedy, and tender human connection.

Fatt Butcher, Dahiah Rivers, Blü Romantic, and Alanna Boden are our hosts for the evening, taking us through the weird and whimsical world of musical theatre, showcasing their incredible voices, whilst highlighting media stereotypes.

The cast arrive in paper chain-links, in a visual representation of the show’s core point; the villainisation of the LGBTQ+ community across musicals, media, politics and society. Several Andrew Lloyd Webber jokes later, mocking his (“allegedly”) huge manhood, the recent sparse staging, videoed performances, and bizarre musical topics, and we’re into the music.

After a couple of pun-filled parodic, ‘Cell Block Tango’, Les Mis, ‘Poor Unfortunate Souls’ medleys, the first act more thoroughly explores these themes, explaining song-choices through short, poignant, yet comedy-spiced speeches. While the show is framed in the pretence of comedy and fun, it constantly pulls the audience back to the frightening reality of systematic oppression and fascism at large in society, and how capitalism continues to propagate homophobic, patrionormative beliefs.  

Alanna Boden is first to open, with a spine-tingling rendition of ‘No Good Deed’ from Wicked, exploring how perspective changes our perception of the “villain”.

Blü Romantic followed with a speech about Dear Evan Hansen – the titular character being an “evil twink” that gets away with the most loathsome things – before a cheerful and powerful performance of ‘Waving Through A Window’ framed by a curtain hoisted around by two hilariously enthusiastic audience members.

Dahliah Rivers, merrily entering the stage to “slut” chants and pointed fingers (a ritual to keep her happy as she “loves the attention”), then performed a vodka-fuelled rendition of Annie’s ‘Little Girls’. The number was a finger to the patriarchy and its discrimination against drag queens’ interactions with children.

Finally, Fatt Butcher’s emotive speech and tear-jerking performance of ‘I Don’t Care Much’ from Cabaret was a show-stopper. They rounded together all these discussions, highlighting the ever-growing rise of fascism (very relevant after the march on Saturday), and their own fear of inaction. To me, the show in itself is one of the most poetic and moving protests out there, using drag artistry, audience participation, theatre, and comedy, to unite everyone, and stand against oppression.

To round off the act, the ensemble united in a critique of capitalism in Cabaret’s ‘Money Money’ before an absurdly well-timed display of their merchandise (ready to purchase in the interval). Well played… well played.

Act 2 was a side-splitting production of Little Shop of Horrors, swapping out Audrey II’s blood fetish for a… *cough* different fluid. With a few lyric changes, lots of “see more, Seymour” puns, some gorgeous costuming and puppet design for Audrey II, multi-rolling, and an audience poll to decide the ending, the show went off with a bang. Blü and Dahliah nailed Seymour and Audrey’s accents and had hilarious chemistry. Alanna stunned as the rubber-wigged, gas-snorting dentist. Fatt Butcher was again the scene-stealer with their vivacious green collared glitzy costume and witty delivery. While they classed it as a “low-budget” hand-crafted parody production, I was rather shocked at how good each piece looked and how well each performer pulled it off. Act o1 was definitely the most impactful, but act two was camp, chaotic and creative.

Alongside these performances were a few audience interactions, some on-stage participation, a pinch of playful mockery, and even an ABBA sing-along.

Sadly, the performance did suffer from several technical difficulties throughout. The microphones often cut out or sounded a little tinny, and sometimes microphones peaked at uncomfortable volumes. Other times, performers forgot to turn their mics on, or the music cues were played prematurely, including one at the end where the tech team had to rush through several tracks to try and find the right number. The performers professionally laughed off and joked about the issues, but a little more fine tuning would really blow the show out of the water.

The team deliver an incredibly heart-warming and timely performance. It strikes the perfect balance between poignant and outrageous, entertaining and educational, always finding new ways to amuse us, while also reminding us of the dangers of misrepresentation, capitalism and fascism.

Photo: Emma Jones