Ana Nogueira’s perceptive comedy Which Way to the Stage (★★★★☆) celebrates and sends up all things theater in its well-constructed tale of two New York City actors, Jeff and Judy, whose friendship is tested when handsome stranger Mark comes between them.
The play, currently at Signature Theatre, generalizes shamelessly about theater folk, yet nails several very specific targets, from hyper-vigilant stage-door stans to sexually ambiguous heartthrobs like Mark who leave gay guys and straight girls alike hopefully pondering.
Director Ethan Heard captures that specificity first of all in the casting. Dani Stoller and Mike Millan match up fruitfully as besties Judy and Jeff, both talented, ambitious performers who worship at the altar of the performer they mutually idolize: Broadway star Idina Menzel.
Michael Tacconi is well-cast, too, as toothsome, tousle-haired Mark, also an actor, though, relative to Jeff and Judy, much less intense in his devotion to craft and career. Tacconi pulls off Mark’s true talent, his understated seductiveness, a cunning tool for success on and off the stage.
Judy is definitely susceptible to Mark’s charms when they meet at an audition for a summer stock production of Avenue Q. But she leaves unsure whether he was coming on to her, or was in fact hitting on the bombshell actress (Nina-Sophia Pacheco) who also showed up at the audition. Then again, Jeff meets Mark, and maybe Mark comes on to him, too.
Those “I don’t like labels” guys can be painfully confounding, especially within the musical theater space, but Mark knows it pays to play to every audience. The script makes the character savvy enough to acknowledge his pretty privilege, while the performance and direction ensure he’s just unaware enough to still be funny.
Jeff and Judy are practically Idina Menzel stalkers, but they’re funny, rather than sad, for obsessively waiting outside the theater where “the wickedly talented Adele Dazeem” belts her way through If/Then almost every night.
Of course, Nogueira has baked in a bounty of pithy musical theater punchlines, and inside jokes tailored to fans of the esteemed Miss Dazeem, among other divas of the Great White Way. We meet Jeff and Judy excitedly debating who did a better Mama Rose, Bernadette Peters or Patti LuPone, and agreeing on at least one count: both divas did it better than Imelda Staunton.
Jeff and Judy disagree vigorously and often — over musicals, over Mark, over Jeff’s drag interpretation of Idina Menzel, over the very idea of female impersonation as entertainment. The hyper-competitive pair even argue over which of them is the star of their story and which one’s the sidekick. Maybe they’re both the sidekick, or maybe neither is.
Nogueira raises a number of intriguing questions about the roles the friends play in one another’s lives, and the roles they’re allowed to play onstage. Will talent be enough to propel Judy to the next phase of her career, or is she missing something that comes fairly naturally to some of her peers? Can Jeff, who embraces his feminine fabulousness, find his place in an industry that welcomes queer folks but prefers to thrust straight-presenting dudes to the top?
Squaring off like opponents in the ring within the compact forum of Richard Ouellette’s versatile brick-wall set, the characters hash out their differences in engaging, even-handed tête-à-têtes. Each member of the cast — including Pacheco, who doubles as a ditzy bachelorette at a bar — adds to the lighthearted, if unsubtle, skewering of certain amusingly recognizable types. And recognizable actresses, with Stoller delivering a spot-on Bernadette Peters.
The company falters only in the final scene, in which a pivotal drag performance doesn’t ring a bell as the bold, brilliant revelation the play seemingly intends it to be. Or perhaps Heard’s direction aims towards a different intention, which just doesn’t transmit as clearly as the rest of Nogueira’s well-wrought exploration into the roles we perform for money, for art, for love, or just for the applause.
Which Way to the Stage runs through Jan. 22 at Signature Theatre, 4200 Campbell Ave. in Arlington, with a Pride Night performance on Jan. 20. Tickets are $40 to $90. Call 703-820-9771, or visit www.sigtheatre.org.
The wigs? On point. The lashes? On point. The costumes? On point. The plot? No point.
Fans of RuPaul's Drag Race might forgive the mess that is Drag: The Musical, but anyone else with an IQ higher than a mannequin with head trauma should sashay away from New World Stages where high-camp plateaus and not enough shade can be thrown.
Tomas Costanza, Justin Andrew Honard (Alaska Thunderfuck), and Ashley Gordon are responsible for the book, music, and lyrics, all of which are rehashed from material you've seen before and jokes that are about as funny as a calculus class.
A South Carolina woman filed a class action lawsuit against toymaker Mattel, claiming she and her daughter suffered "emotional distress" after being directed to an explicit, adult website that was printed on the packaging for dolls based on characters in the film adaptation of the Broadway musical Wicked.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, notes that first editions of the boxes for thedolls bore the website Wicked.com, an adult film website, instead of the correct address, WickedMovie.com.
The misprint led to a recall of the dolls, which were temporarily pulled from stores until the packaging could be replaced. Mattel apologized for the error and sent out a warning to parents to discard the product packaging or obscure the link.
They're havin' a gay old time in Bareback, Idaho. Foot stompin', lumber jackin', and high steppin' dance moves are all part of the charm as the townsfolk prepare for Stacey's (Marla Mindelle) wedding. Welcome to The Big Gay Jamboree.
The only problem is that no one in the town quite understands the leading lady and, after a night of heavy drinking, she can't make sense of them either.
Somehow, she's trapped in a time warp with Flora (Natalie Walker), a nymph shunned for her sexual proclivities, Bert (Constanine Rousouli), a sexy serial killer who is coming to terms with his own sexuality, Clarence (Paris Nix), a handsome, African-American man who is tired of being the token black in the story, but who wins Stacey's affection, and an ensemble of townspeople whose squeaky clean, perma-smile demeanors suggest a Peyton Place vibe with jazz hands.
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