Buffalo Theater: Show pushes the limits and still gets the laughs

By Melinda Miller

“The Legend of Georgia McBride,” the comic story of an Elvis impersonator-turned-drag-performer, has found an unlikely stage at Torn Space theater and the result is extraordinary. Funny, flashy, sexy and heartwarming …. let’s just say anyone suffering from FOMO won’t want to miss out on this show.

It runs through June 20.

Promos call it a “campy comedy,” which, while accurate, is also wholly inadequate. At Torn Space, they just can’t help but push the boundaries, even in a cross-dressing play that already ignores them. 

Though “Georgia McBride” is not typical Torn Space material, when Javier Bustillos of Buffalo United Artists suggested they take it on, co-directors Dan Shanahan and Melissa Meola embraced the challenge. (Bustillos is producing consultant on the show.) 

“We’re going to make you laugh,” Meola remarked before the first show, admitting “That’s different for us.” 

She was right on both counts. Playwright Matthew Lopez’s straightforward narrative is a departure from the usual atmospheric, philosophical and/or existential productions at Torn Space. It also makes you laugh, often. 

The action is set in a small-town bar in Florida, with six characters played by a stellar cast: Annette Daniels Taylor rocks as Eddie, the jaded bar owner; Anthony Alcocer stays just this side of over-the-top as Casey, an Elvis impersonator and “Georgia”; Christine Turturro-Beausoleil provides practicality and understanding as Jo, his wife; and Michael Seitz takes a neighborly turn as Jason, their landlord.

Then we have the two life-meets-art-is-life performances of Michael Blasdell, aka BeBe Bvlgari, as Miss Rexy (Anorexia Nervosa), and the one and only Jimmy Janowski playing the incomparable Miss Tracy Mills.

Shanahan and Meola’s inspired staging of Lopez’s sharply written script still holds to the Torn Space ethos. For example: The show opens with Casey onstage as Elvis. He could be singing “Hound Dog” or “Blue Suede Shoes” to kick things up, but that would be too obvious for this production.

This Elvis has heat, crooning a steamy, slow-snapping, high-intensity version of “Fever” (which the original Elvis covered early in his career), and Alcocer sells it right out of the gate… “fever in the morning, fever all through the night.”

Unfortunately, Casey has no audience and, very soon, no job. Eddie can’t afford the empty seats and, willing to try anything, he picks up his cousin Tracy’s drag queen cabaret act in a last-ditch effort to bring in customers. 

So, while Casey and his wife Jo are coming to terms with being flat broke and pregnant, the two queens (Janowski and Blasdell) arrive looking like a couturier’s fever dream — and suddenly anything is possible. 

Necessity, being such a mother … of invention … leads to Casey donning a dress to pay the bills. With Miss Tracy as his mentor, he gets back onstage and inexplicably thrives as “Georgia McBride.”

What follows is an intimate, hilarious examination of drag personas, personal choices and character transformations. It is the stuff that legends are made of.

“I think it’s safe to say we were both surprised,” Tracy says of Georgia’s success.

The entire show is full of rich moments. Among my favorites: 

• Blasdell as Rexy going full Tina Turner for “River Deep, Mountain High.”

• Seitz as Jason recalling his own experience with “gender fluid” dating, a la “The Crying Game.”

• Alcocer performing Tom Makar’s song “I Was Lost,” as Georgia.

• Daniels Taylor in every moment of Eddie’s exasperation, along with Turturro-Beausoleil’s expanding “pregnancy”; 

• Janowski’s bizarre recounting of the tale of Cocoa Latiffe;

• And all the outrageous musical numbers, a show in themselves.

This all plays out on a set packed with exceptional production work – sound, lighting, videos, everything – that enriches the action without stepping on it. 

There could be an entire second review on Brian Milbrand’s videos, the seamless set movements (Mary Margaret Keenan-Brown), innovative sound design by Justin Rowland, and lighting from Matvey Kitchen that underlines that this is indeed where the magic happens. I could add more than a dozen more names here, but you can read them yourself in the program when you go.

Shows are at 7:30 p.m. this Friday and Saturday (June 5-6), and Thursdays through Saturdays, June 11-13, and June 18-20, at the newly renovated and expanded Torn Space theater, attached to the Adam Mickiewicz Library and Dramatic Circle, 612 Fillmore Ave. 

Extra parking is available in the lot opposite the theater. Tickets are $30 (general admission) at tornspacetheater.com. The bar in the Mick is open before and after each performance.