If Christmas for you is a horror show, Sink the Pink’s festive panto could be the way to go. The annual dose of camp storytelling from the capital’s leading queer performance collective has moved away from Selfridge’s basement (where they’d been based for the last two years) to a more theatrical setting at the Pleasance Theatre. And it's gone in a very different direction: rather than the ususal Christmassy romp with a London theme, ‘How to Catch a Krampus’ plays out like an old school Halloween chiller (and no, before you ask, a krampus isn’t a Victorian era STI).
We follow spirit medium Ginger Johnson into a dark world (we’re not really sure where and when, but there's snow) as she is called upon to help a poor girl find her brother, who has mysteriously disappeared. The drag action unfolds in period costume with the cast of six playing a series of very odd parts, from Morris dancers (their song ‘The Sexless Marriage’ was a favourite ditty) to dementia sufferers.
The action is interspersed by hysterical musical numbers, including a fresh take on famous Christmas number ones, some operatic lip-syncing, Christmas carols and a saucy, slow reimagining of Rihanna’s ‘S&M’ performed by the inimitable Lavinia Co-op. In fact, Co-op, now in her late sixties, consistently steals scenes like she’s been doing it for, well, years.
The order of things is as chaotic as a dysfunctional family’s Christmas Day, with songs that don’t always have much to do with the action at all stunting the flow of the story that’s unfolding. But dysfunctional is how we like it. Actually terrifying in moments, and side-splittingly silly all the way along, ‘How to Catch a Krampus Is’ the ideal antidote to the schmaltz of the holiday season. And no, I'm still not really sure what a krampus is.