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Krampus as camp as Christmas ought to be
Not a Coca Cola Christmas: How to Catch a Krampus Pic: Ali Wright

How to Catch a Krampus
Pleasance Theatre, London

HAVING danced the night away at several of its industrial-scale glitterfests, I was curious to see how the international drag collective Sink the Pink would interpret the tale of Krampus — the child-napping half-bogeyman, half-goat of European folklore — in the murky confines of the Pleasance Theatre.

A little sceptical as to whether they could pull it off, I was pleasantly surprised by a production which, written and directed by drag queen Ginger Johnson, truly is “a black-hearted antidote to all things cheery this festive season.”

Set in a Victorian London that's more Hammer Horror than Dickensian, it has a spiritualist-cum-pantomime dame, played by Johnson, who's looking for her cat when she bumps into a desperate mother (Mairi Houston) in search of her missing son.

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