Outrageous revue sings
Reba Mcentire belting out Turn on the Radio, anyone? Or how about Cher doing Believe? Or Annie Lennox with Sweet Dreams?
We’re talking here of exact lip-synching replicas — all part of the great cast of detailed characters in the exuberant, outrageous, and irresistibly funny female impersonators show at the Fringe festival.
The two performers, Justine Tyme and Terri Stevens, are the stars of Guys in Disguise Classic: The Silver Anniversary Edition.
Directed by Neon, it’s spirited, fastpaced, adult, men-in-glamorous dresses, cabaret-style entertainment that, in addition to the aforementioned big names, features a wide range of songand-dance stuff, all the way from Julie Andrews’ Mary Poppins (Stevens — unless I’m badly mistaken in the who’s who in this show) with a tipsy version of A Spoonful of Sugar to a dizzy Tea For Two medley sung by everyone (Stevens) from Bernadette Peters to Liza Minnelli and Ethel Merman. And let’s not forget Justine’s hilarious patter song about the discomfort of mammograms and stirrups or her visually clever send-up of Holly Dunn’s Daddy’s Hands, or both women’s — er, gentlemen’s— little display of one-upmanship in the sequins-and-feathers department during a Lady Gaga routine.
My only reservation with the makeover spot halfway through the show — the two “women” choose a guy from the audience — is that it didn’t seem funny enough in comparison with what came before and the stuff that came after. A drag, you might say, on the comic momentum of these two very talented men in drag.