If a new avenue in Liza Minnelli’s career had to open up somewhere, this seems almost too perfect. Minnelli has previously produced her own concerts, though Drag: The Musical (New World Stages, through Nov. 24) marks her first time producing a full-length musical—a hit-and-miss queer-themed production about two bitterly rivalrous drag queens running two neighboring drag clubs.
Think bright lights, pumping rock and pop from an onstage band, and fabulous costumes. All the awards should go to Marco Marco for a parade of ever more incredible creations, including a personal favorite lime-green lampshade-shaped dress with two crying eye emojis WORN FOR A FUNERAL. Yet, featuring stars of RuPaul’s Drag Race, this musical—for all its flash, jokes, poppy standards and bitchy one-liners—is, similar to antecedents like Torch Song Trilogy, Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, and The Birdcage, really about love, pride, identity, and family, both biological and chosen.
With a book, music, and lyrics by Tomas Costanza, Justin Andrew Honard, and Ashley Gordon, and confident direction and fizzy choreography by Spencer Liff, the two hour, intermission-less show sees Kitty Galloway (Alaska Thunderf**k, Honard’s drag alter ego) and Alexis Gillmore (Nick Adams) as two old friends (or maybe more), now sworn, unspeaking rivals after a mysterious falling out some time in the past. Every time this is raised, the action—on Jason Sherwood’s evocatively arty-meets-scuzzy downtown set—freezes.
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Alexis’ The Fishtank has a problem thanks to Alexis not paying her bills and the IRS on their case, while Kitty’s the Cathouse is being eyed by real estate moguls with dollar signs in their eyes. Drag culture celebration numbers like “Wigs,” “Queen Kitty,” and “Drag Is Expensive” gee the audience up as the wheels of the plot begin to turn and the zingers begin to fly.
Further complications arise in the introduction of Tom (Joey McIntyre), Alexis’ straight brother who is a whizz with figures, but whose relationship with Alexis is testy because of what Alexis sees a lack of support he gave her while she was coming out. Tom himself has a son, Brendan (Yair Keydar when I saw it—alternating with Remi Tuckman), the true star and most consequential story of the show.
Brendan is questioning their own identity, and has the best songs of the show, “It’s So Pretty,” and the solo “I’m Just Brendan,” which resists all labels and declarations of specific identity to be instead an anthem of a youthful desire to simply be—and be accepted as—oneself. Tom himself sings a fun version of his own truth—“Straight Man,” defiantly laying out the pride in his own little island of heterosexuality.
Eddie Korbich provides sweet support as a drunk gay patron of both bars, who wishes their warring owners would get over themselves already. Jujubee, Nick Laughlin, Jan Sport, Lagoona Bloo, and Luxx Noir London have immense fun, as the resident drag queens of both establishments, singing and bitching as a luminously attired Greek chorus for each of their diva mistresses. Liisi LaFontaine plays Dixie, a born-female drag queen, who falls for Tom. J. Elaine Marcos—as IRS inspector Gloria Schmidt, property developer Rita LaRitz, and the very rich and ruthless Liberty Van Der Snatch—has a ball putting on disguises, ridiculous accents, and causing general trouble.
The excellent Thunderf**k seems more comfortable as Kitty (chaneling Joan Crawford as Crystal Allen in The Women; she even has Jungle Red as her nail polish), than Adams’ Alexis, who as Kitty herself cattily notes, looks more hunky and muscled-guy than drag queen.
Still, the show is fun, and in sketching Brendan’s story so carefully transforms its tone of pantomime and silliness to something fleetingly raw and moving. Other elements don’t gel, or get lost in the folds of the overworked plot. But judging by the number of roaring Drag Race fans in attendance, Drag: The Musical may well find its own audience.
