Word: victorias
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
There is an educational component to the show it wants to trace the evolution of modern Christmas festivities from the reign of Queen Victoria Before, Revels has looked at the winter solstice in Meso-America, Brittany, and among the gypsy people. Still, I don't understand. Am I missing something? Why am I not impressed by a boy who skips from one side to the other of a broomstick laid on the stage (stepping on it at one point, I might add), in the aptly named "Broom Dance." There was an a cappella duet of a chilling minor tone that...
Blake Edwards' plot is standard gender bender fare: Victoria Grant, an Alabama soprano penniless in 1930s Paris, is persuaded by the gay Toddy (Jamie Ross) to pretend that she is really a man playing a woman. Who better, after all, to play a woman than a real woman? Victoria thus becomes 'Count Victor Grazinsky, Europe's greatest female impersonator and soon finds herself the reception of much acclaim. However, as she achieves success, she finds herself falling for King Marchan (Dennis Cole), a Chicago businessman/gangster, who in turn is anguished by his attraction to this 'man.' In this happy world...
...female female impersonator, Tennille, better known as half of '70s light-pop duo Captain and Tennille (of "Love Will Keep Us Together" and "Muskrat Love" fame), is passable as Victoria but lacks the je ne sais quoi that would justify the adulation her character supposedly receives. It seems hard to believe Gay Pah-ree could not produce any drag queens more fabulous than her "Victor." The idea of play-acting as a liberating experience has been done in plays from As You Like It and before, but Tennille hardly seems as emancipated as she claims to feel. She never experiences...
...supporting cast redeems the musical, preventing it from being a complete drag (and that pun reflects the musical's general level of humor). Admittedly, as the effete Toddy, Ross signals half his jokes and is forced to deliver some of the show's worst groaners--in response to Victoria's "I don't want to be a man anymore", he replies "Neither do I." But Dana Lynn Mauro as Norma, King's moll, elicits huge laughs with her brassy style, all malapropisms and mangled French ("You know French?" "Oh sure, I just don't speak it"). Flashy and loud, MaBBuro...
...Victoria's recurrent gag of hitting a spectacular glass-shattering high note sums this production up: an idea not inherently funny and repeated too often to the point of tiresomeness...