Halfway through "The Vaudvillians", Dr. Dan Von Dandy says to his wife and show business partner, Ms. Kitty Witless, that her part of their act has "too much comedy and not enough glamour."  Unfortunately, the exact opposite of this statement is true of "The Vaudevillians", a two-man drag cabaret starring Jinkx Monsoon (Witless) and Major Scales (Von Dandy):  too much glamour and not enough comedy.

The vaudevillians referred to in the title of the piece were frozen in an avalanche in the 1920s; now freshly -- if not completely -- defrosted, they perform songs that run the gamut of the 20th Century, everything from Cole Porter to Madonna.  Monsoon (beautifully dolled-up in sequin and boas) and Scales are both extremely talented and work admirably hard at their craft.  Yet this is still the kind of show that, were you to go out for a walk in the middle of it and return twenty minutes later, you would find you had not missed a thing.  In fact, the whole show has the feel of an over-extended "Saturday Night Live" skit that goes on much too long.  It goes into heavy overkill without the redeeming value of camp.  The material is stilted, forced, uninteresting, racist, and devoid of any content and meaning.  However, the news is not all bad.  Monsoon and Scales have a knack for improvisation (if the improvised segments are in fact really improvised: given the overall quality of the show, it’s hard not to be suspicious).

All this said, it is certainly true that the LGBT community is under-represented in terms of texts in the theatre, and it is better that this kind of theatre exist than that it not exist at all.  It’s only unfortunate that this example of it is of such poor quality.

Performances of "The Vaudevillians" continue through November 19th.  Check out our full event listing here: https://stagebuddy.com/listingdetail.php?lid=13593