Death Drop is ridiculous – and I mean that in the best way possible.
We are cordially – or not – invited to Shantay Manor on Tuck Island, where a group of inauspicious strangers are gathering to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Charles and Diana, and drink to their long and happy marriage. After all, Death Drop takes place in 1991 and we are fully in the realm of camp.
This is Dragatha Christie – and the puns will keep coming – a murder mystery spoof starring drag queens and kings. Half the cast are also Drag Race alums: Willam (one-hit-wonder pop starlet Shazza), Ra’Jah O’Hara (as sultry TV weather girl Summer Rains); Drag Race UK’s Vinegar Strokes as Lady von Fistenburg and Karen From Finance as disliked tabloid editor Morgan Pierce. Subtle it is not.
Holly Stars wrote the play and also plays triplet sisters serving the party – serving it with Fray Bentos, Viennetta, and other 80s/90s fare. Appropriately enough, she’s the star of the show: effortlessly hilarious, seemingly without even trying. I need to see more of this particular queen. Never have Findus Crispy Pancakes been so hilarious, or namedropped at such a rate since the 90s.
Not that the rest of the cast was bad at all. Vinegar Strokes opens the play by singing a tune reminding us that this is 1991. Strokes is a West End queen and her voice is in fine form, as is her purposely comic overacting, this being drag after all. The two male characters in the show, Richard Energy (as Tory MP, yes, Rich Whiteman) and Georgia Frost (TV producer Phil Maker) hold their own against the queens – more impressive for Energy only being around since the start of 2020 and Frost doesn’t seem to have an offstage drag king alter ego.
During the first half, the two American queens are the weakest – Willam is basically playing her own character – and while they both come into their own in the second act, Death Drop is deeply British, and probably wouldn’t work anywhere else. Some jokes could maybe be a bit shorter – the whole thing could, really – but you will laugh non-stop.
New Theatre, Cardiff, Wed 20 Oct.
Death Drop continues until Sat 23 Oct. Tickets: £28-£48.50. Info: here
words CHRIS WILLIAMS photos MATT CROCKETT