Cynthia Harris and Charles Busch (photo: James Laysne)
It’s easy to understand how Jimmy (Charles Busch), a
middle-aged female impersonator (oops “tribute artist”), suddenly and
unfortunately at-large after years of steady employment in a drag show at the
Flamingo Lounge in Las Vegas, isn’t thrilled to hear Adriana (Cynthia Harris),
the wealthy, elderly, ailing and very grandiose widow from whom he rents an
upstairs room in her elegant, four-story New York Greenwich Village townhouse, tell
him that she is planning to sell the house.
Although Jimmy has always come back to New
York to the affordable room between shows, he is
ceremoniously told (in a brilliantly protracted monologue by a terrific Harris)
that he will have to vacate the premises. With no money or savings Jimmy turns
for help and advice to his best friend Rita (Julie Halston). Glib and sassy and
a smart dresser, she was Jimmy’s former partner in their cabaret act who has
since pursued a not very lucrative career as a realtor? She shows up whenever
Jimmy is in town.
As we know from Halston’s hilarious performances in past
Busch shows such as “The Divine Sister,” that she is the spark that will ignite
a sputtering scene, which she does on more than one occasion. What makes Jimmy
even sadder is that Adriana, who has been living in relative seclusion knowing
that she is dying, is also giving away all the elegant gowns she designed from
her former years as an haute couturier.
Jimmy love those glamorous gowns as well as Adriana’s high
fashioned wig. They fit him so perfectly that when Adriana dies suddenly on the
sofa in the to-die-for parlor (stunningly designed by Anna Louizos), it seems
like there might be a way for Jimmy, abetted by quick-thinking-faster-talking Rita,
to remain there by assuming Adriana’s identity. The deliberations on how this
is to be done are too convoluted and preposterous for us to be overly concerned.
Their agenda, however, does include buying their own rental property with the
money.
We are not surprised that Busch plays a character with a
penchant and a flair for using classic lines exactly as spoken by classic film
stars in their classic movies, is in rare form. Perhaps looking just a little
chunkier in what is essentially a rather clunky farce, Busch, nevertheless, keeps
us glued to the play’s absurdist twists and turns through the sheer bravura of
his performance. His Jimmy is also, after all, someone worthy of our compassion
and empathy.
It is easy enough to keep on laughing through a series of mad-cap
machinations and behavior that soon involves Adriana’s estranged, highly
neurotic, bi-polar niece Christina (Mary Bacon) and her transgender
son/daughter Oliver (Keira Keely). Christina believes that the house is hers to
sell even as she also believes that Jimmy is Adriana. Bacon’s frantically funny
performance displays Christina’s many neuroses. Keely is excellent and
endearing as Oliver. Also showing up to become embroiled in the mix is Adriana’s
long-forgotten, live-in boy-toy Rodney (a comically charismatic Jonathan
Walker) who has evolved into a smarmy crook with a dastardly agenda of his own.
Despite an occasional lag in the action, under the abetting
direction of Carl Andress, everyone flails about as if trying to catch up with the
floundering plot. But the play’s perpetrators are having such great fun that it
is a pleasure to just sit back and ponder what would Bette Davis, Joan Crawford
or Norma Shearer (if you have to ask, there’s no help for you) have done to get
out of a situation like this: Exactly what Busch does and in what he wears (wonderfully
glamorous costumes by Gregory Gale) that’s what, and that’s fine with me.
“The Tribute Artist” (through March 30, 2014)
59E59 Theaters, 59 E. 59th
Street
For tickets ($70) www.primarystages.org (212) 840-9705
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