Interludes

VIEWPOINTS – Drag infiltrates downtown theater: Sasha Velour’s THE BIG REVEAL and ONEOFUS’s SLEEPING BEAUTY

• By drediman
• December 20, 2023
• No Comments

This holiday season, you’ll be able to find drag performances — with all their joy and defiance — infiltrating legitimate theater spaces, particularly those catering to downtown audiences. Read on for my thoughts.

SASHA VELOUR: THE BIG REVEAL LIVE SHOW
La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club
Through December 21

First up at the Ellen Stewart Theatre at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club is Sasha Velour’s The Big Reveal Live Show (RECOMMENDED). The evening is essentially a collection of artfully wrought lip sync performances, with a couple of scripted segments — one a sentimental autobiographical segment about her childhood, the other an intellectually knotted lecture on camp — thrown in for audiences to get to know the RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 9 winner a little better (the high art look queen won her season in emphatic fashion). One of the smartest and stylish of the RuPaul winners, Velour captivated throughout, bringing intelligence and artistry in either mode. But make no mistake, the highlights of the evening were undoubtedly the show’s parade of lip syncs, during which showmanship and the highest level of crafty invention were tantalizingly intermingled (no spoilers here; the lesser said about them, the better). In these meticulously and ravishi performed gems, Velour’s The Big Reveal lived up its title time and time again — and then some — making a valiant case for the ability of aesthetic alone to provide sustenance to theatergoers.

ONEOFUS: SLEEPING BEAUTY
Abrons Arts Center
Through December 24

Then over at another hotbed of experimental theater-making — the Abrons Arts Center in the Lower East Side — I experienced my first pantomime, ONEOFUS’s presentation of Sleeping Beauty (HIGHLY RECOMMENDED). Lovingly referred to as simply “panto” in England (where the genre originated and where it remains a beloved holiday tradition), pantomimes are usually based on well-known fairytales and characterized by plenty of audience participation (e.g., singing along, shouting back at performers), cross-dressing, and plenty of campy gags. Community-focused and surprisingly well produced, ONEOFUS’s annual pantos have in their own right become a New York holiday staple. This year’s effervescent family-friendly production of Sleeping Beauty (the company’s third panto at Abrons) — winningly written and directed by Mat Fraser and Julie Atlas Muz, respectively — continues that tradition, and at its center is Jonathan Rodriguez’s sweet and spicy drag performance as the peasant-turned-queen Jenny Lopez (yes, from the block). In fact, Rodriguez’s distinctly American brand of drag lends itself well to pantomime and deliciously fuels the overall cadence of the jovially-performed show, which is in turn topical, inclusive, and woke in just the right ways. Riding on an irresistible wave of goodwill and giddy over-the-topness, the show winkingly invites us all to be both a little naughty and nice.