Little Miss Christmas is a raucous and captivating piece of drag theatre that had the whole audience laughing
Patti Boo Rae created a space for people from many different walks of life to come together and enjoy an evening of Christmas fun. She started the piece with a bang – interrupting the ‘disembodied voice of male authority’ to establish that her show had no rules – people could film, take photos, eat snacks, making this a really accessible place to be. Furthermore, she opened the show with an incredible lip sync performance, which left the audience waiting to see much more from her as a performer. She was clearly an incredibly all-round performer, singing, dancing and having some amazing moments of comedy, including a great rendition of ‘Blue Christmas’ sung as though they were underwater.
In Little Miss Christmas, Patti Boo Rae has a multitude of different special Guests, differing across the run as to who you’ll see. We got the joy of seeing Duane Nasis, who was a joy to watch. He gave us all a right laugh with his costume, which didn’t leave very much to the imagination, and then gave a brilliant lip sync routine with dancing, a beautiful speech and some cracking tricks to top it off.
My one qualm with this performance was the length and quantity of the video elements. Don’t get me wrong, they did add to the performance, and some of them were absolutely hilarious. But it felt at times like a stalling tactic to cover some of the lengthy costume changes. I have to say however, the advert was brilliantly done and did genuinely add to Patti Boo Rae’s Character development!
One thing that stands out about this performance was the level of audience participation. Not only did Patti Boo Rae frequently make eye contact with and interact with the audience from afar, they also chose three people throughout the night to directly interact with them. The first of whom was the interviewer and was talked through exactly what to do, asking Patti questions to give the audience an insight into her personality. The second was asked to ‘pick’ a present from under the christmas tree, followed by a great interaction with Patti, which I won’t spoil, in case you come to see it! But it was brilliantly done, and like most of this performance, absolutely hilarious! The third and final person chosen was ‘someone responsible’ and again, I won’t go into too much detail, but it made for a great show, and a great ending!
Little Miss Christmas runs at Southwark Playhouse Borough until 3rd Jan. Tickets here.