Review: Tomorrow Is Already Dead, Soho Theatre

Ms Sharon Le Grand, played by Ms Sharon Le Grand, is the brassy drag queen who presides over the Dusty Tuna, and like so many small business owners, wonders how she’s going to keep the lights on. As for the bar staff, Siri (Jeanie Crystal) and Alexa (Shane Convery) – one venomous, the other vacant, well they’re good for a song-and-dance routine, but they will insist on putting ice in her Snakebite and Black on the rocks! It’s a lonely job, and who could blame her for dreaming of a knight in a shining car. Pond, Jimmy Pond, played smoothly by Iestyn Arwel, might be the answer to those prayers…if only he weren’t trying to kill her!

The plot of this drag-panto-cabaret romp is a loose skeleton, fleshed out with original songs, political barbs, anarchic animations, 007 spoofery and lots of jokes of varying quality. The one fixed point is Nicky Harris, the bar’s white-faced, bare-chested pianist, and the show’s musical director, whose soundtrack contributes significantly to the production’s atmosphere, and whose louche presence is a nice counterpoint to the garishness of everything else.

Although garish, Max Allen’s costumes are a delight. Ms Sharon, who favours a bold print, wears a selection of striking outfits, of which a skin-tight orange and black jumpsuit is perhaps the most memorable. Even better are the outsized Mary Quant-style tunics with concentric circles worn by Siri and Alexa, which are so effective that it’s a shame the 1960s aesthetic is not applied more consistently to the design of the show.

If the aesthetic dips into the 1960s, the politics are very much of the 2020s. Despite being in thrall to Mr Pond’s suave good looks for most of the show, Ms Sharon ultimately has her fun and then lets him down gently. For his part, Pond realizes that the life of a contract killer isn’t really for him and therapises himself into a role that better suits his temperament and predilections. Most pertinently of all, Le Grand has been judged a threat to national security, worthy of assassination, on the suspicion that she is trying to create a new breed of gender-variable children and babies with breasts, in an allusion to the current furore over drag storytimes.

For this viewer, the highlight of the show is Josh Quinton’s weirdly sinister and subversive, big-lipped animations. There’s a lairy ‘N’ giving Agent 0800 his orders in a broad estuary accent, with a rapidly changing backdrop of locations. Even better, a gravel-voiced and cynical Fairy GodLiver who pops up to suggest that Ms Sharon should probably stop drinking so much of the profits, and that hoping for an eventual liver transplant is not a foolproof wellness plan.

Perhaps deliberately, this is not an especially polished show. Like Sharon herself, it’s a bit chaotic, a bit slovenly, and at times feels too much like a sixth form panto. Some jokes land squarely, but others, like the Blind Date send-up, miss the mark. Still, Tomorrow Is Already Dead is very much a lively and a fun night out, probably best enjoyed after one or several few vodka martinis.

Written by: Ms Sharon Le Grand
Music composed by: Nicky Harris
Directed by: Sam Curtis Lindsay
Animation by: Josh Quinton

Tomorrow Is Already Dead has completed its current run at Soho Theatre.