Escape from Planet Trash  ☆☆☆☆
Pleasance Theater & Sink the Pink

Panto season is in full swing and if you fancy something that harks to the traditions but also manages to incorporate a non binary, eco friendly, vegan message (it’s like carrot cake – way better than it sounds) then Escape from Planet Trash is right up your Insta.

Written, directed, starring and probably catered by the raucous Ginger Johnson it’s fun, full throated and dirty in every sense of the word. Panto loves a good pop reference and from the thrumming of the Flash Gordon theme in the opening scene to the Final Countdown near the end it’s an energetic barrage of puns, double entendre and slapstick. This peaks in the middle with the most scatological perversion of Always Look on the Bright Side of Life (spoiler alert – in this version it only rhymes with bright) sung to a mutant turd with self-esteem issues. The party pooper is played with suitable grimace by Our Lady of Latrine, Lavinia Coop.

With panto the plot hardly matters and that’s one tradition Johnson holds on tight to. This is the story of a colony of space explorers flung out into the universe who happen to come upon the last remnants of a toxic, dying Earth that has been renamed Planet Trash. Seeking to save the last human inhabitants they battle the evolved descendants of the Christmas turkeys who are out to get revenge on their historical nemesissies. With a crew containing a non-binary genitally adaptive alien from Planet Gooch called Private Parts, who is coincidentally seeking new private parts to collect and catalogue, the action shoots off in all directions. Don’t tax your sanity by trying too hard to follow it. It’s all about laughs over logic. Spock would turn in his grave.

One of the secrets of success of Sink the Pink is the tight internal engineering of a seemingly slap dash exterior. The set is suitably trashy yet still manages the most balletic usage of the circular spinning stage. Combine this with some fantastic lighting and suddenly there is a whole world brought to life within what looks like a corrugated caravan. The production team (Designed by Ginger Johnson, Lighting by Clancy Flynn, Stage Manager Eppie Conrad et al) should have been on stage for the bows.

The performers captured the camp with gusto and managed to overcome a few mic issues. Panto wanders all over the place but the brassy and busty Ginger always managed to Pied Piper it back home for the high points. If you love your Christmas traditions but also worry about the excesses of consumption and the plight of the turkeys then try a bite of this Johnson.

Escape from Planet Trash 
Pleasance Theater & Sink the Pink
Until December 29th 2019

Review by Andrew Hebden

Queerguru Correspondent Andrew Hebden is a MEDIA & CULTURAL STUDIES graduate spending his career between London, Beijing and NYC as an expert in media and social trends. As part of the expanding minimalist FIRE movement he recently returned to the UK and lives in Soho. He devotes as much time as possible to the movies, theatre and the gym. His favorite thing is to try something (anything) new every day.