Author: Tom Williams

Yet I suppose its luridly overdone production design is the closest Priscilla comes to actual camp. Like a drag queen who genuinely believes her own tinsel-laden illusions, Priscilla is more often than not only “playing” a good time. Desperate to keep you from noticing the wrinkled clichés beneath all the makeup or how its only ever lip-syncing someone else’s tunes, Priscilla blinds you with tasteless spectacle, gaudy costumes and enough bitchy “shade” throwing for an episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race.

But Priscilla isn’t fooling anyone. Dress it up however you like. It still doesn’t sing…

There’s no denying that Smokey Joe’s has immense commercial appeal. Dispensing altogether with the narrative conventions of a book musical, Smokey Joe’s is all revue, featuring near forty pop standards from the songwriting team of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller—responsible for such leviathan-sized hits as “Hound Dog,” “Jailhouse Rock,” “Stand By Me,” and “On Broadway.”

Theo Ubique’s recent staging of Aspects of Love thankfully avoids the demonstrable mistake of over-producing Webber’s most “high-minded” operetta. With little more than a piano, a violin and an assortment of woodwinds in the orchestra pit, director Fred Anzevino and musical director Jeremy Ramey are eager to let this immensely talented cast of musical performers show us what cynical audiences had long thought impossible in a Lloyd Webber show—namely, nuance of character and complexity of theme. Stripped to its bare narrative bones, this is Aspects of Love in close-up. Yet while it is clear that Theo Ubique’s cast and crew are up for the challenge, one cannot help but feel that Aspects of Love itself is not