Christchurch audiences, who are sometimes noted for their mainstream tastes, have a real love for high-end drag acts – a love, I suspect, that has been cultivated and nurtured by the burlesque and cabaret shows brought in each year by the World Buskers Festival. Drag Queen Ginger Minj’s autobiographical revue Crossdresser for Christ will easily satisfy this year’s audience’s taste for (finish the innuendo for yourself).  

Ginger – the alter-ego of Joshua Eads-Brown – is well-known as a competitor and undeniable fan favourite on two seasons of reality show RuPaul’s Drag Race. She is like a colourful combination of wisecracking Lucille Ball, cult filmmaker John Waters’ grotesque muse Divine and that big-haired auntie who wants to wipe something from your face with a hanky while trying to convince you to have a third serving of her ‘famous’ casserole. 

She also has magnificent presence. She’s a hypnotic storyteller, a sharp comedian and a phenomenal singer whose rich and nuanced baritone slides between exquisite delicacy and a fearsome belt, saturating the intimate space of the Old Boys’ Theatre at Christ’s College.

The show opens as a foot-stomping, hands-in-the-air gospel revival – note the bale of hay near the pulpit – before taking the form of a confessional, with chapters in Ginger’s life story framed as biblical books and peppered with musical theatre numbers, soul standards and pop songs.

Ginger grows up in small town Florida, heads to New York to find her fortune in musical theatre, hits rock bottom, discovers drag, falls in love and has her heart broken. This isn’t a redemption narrative, because life is messy and we don’t get to live in three act arcs, but it is nonetheless affirming. It is peppered with the delicious combination of pathos and salty humour that I love about this style of cabaret. It always feels grounded in an emotional reality, even though the music is heightened, the costuming outlandish and the jokes filthy.

I can see that this show will have huge appeal, although those Drag Race fans who might come looking for reality TV back stage gossip will need to look elsewhere. I only wish that the publicity material contained the details for, and gave credit to, Ginger’s support: a pianist and a singer whose comic presence gives ample opportunity for quick tonal shifts, skewering the seriousness with wit and bathos.

Come for the outrageous hair, the blinding sequins and the foam padding; stay for the devastating rendition of Hedwig and the Angry Inch’s “Wicked Little Town”. Hallelujah. 

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