Karin Danger: Hot Box

Karin Danger was one of the creators of ‘World War Wonderful’, which came on like an Andrews Sisters pastiche and went out like ‘Starship Troopers’. Now the Australian performer presents a solo satire exploring the discontents of the beauty ideal, from schoolyard peer pressure and DIY make-up tutorials to toyboy expectations and finding one’s own sweet spot of looking good comfortably. As a feminist discourse, it’s familiar but no less current or important for that, and it’s realised through impressive original songs, storytelling and comic vignettes expressing with warmth the numerous everyday experiences at the root of the issue. Danger’s material is tightly written, her voice strong and her style amiably conversational; stand-out bits include a number about the delicate calibration required to look just like everyone else and a gumshoe noir story with a resolutely a sartorial sensibility. The show isn’t directed with much dynamism but overall it's an engagingly witty and accomplished take on a depressingly perennial subject.