A drag legend comes alive in 'Divine/Intervention'

The last time his friends saw Glenn Milstead, he was waving from the balcony of his Los Angeles hotel room, singing "Arrivederci, Roma."

The next day, March 7, 1988, he was dead at 42 of cardiomegaly. He had died in his sleep; he weighed more than 300 pounds.

The obituaries didn't just announce the death of Glenn Milstead; they marked the end of Divine, the larger-than-life "drag queen of the century," the trash goddess at the heart of such notorious films by director John Waters as Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble, and - teetering on the brink of respectability - Hairspray.

The division between the queen and the man is at the heart of Divine/Intervention, a new play conceived by Braden Chapman and written by E. Dale Smith. It opens Thursday at the Philadelphia gay nightclub Voyeur and runs through Aug. 2 before moving to the Lynn Redgrave Theatre as part of New York City's Fringe Festival.

Divineherself knew the Voyeur's stage from her long touring experience. To celebrate the opening, Atomic Cosmetics, a favorite of drag and burlesque performers, will introduce a new lipstick - flamingo pink, of course.

Chapman understands the schism between person and persona very well: He has his own alter ego, Mimi Imfurst. Divine/Intervention features two actors who play the two sides of Milstead - Ryan Walter, who plays Glenn, and Bobby Goodrich as Divine - on the actor's last night. (Both are experienced drag performers, though only Goodrich is in drag in this production.)

Divine was brash and crass, pushing the boundaries of acceptable pop culture. She was the ultimate queen of camp-trash and proud of it. But that was Divine, not Glenn Milstead, whom friends describe as soft-spoken and kind.

"The psyche of a working drag queen - that story has never been told. We have The Birdcage, To Wong Foo [Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar]. These are all fantastic drag queen movies, but none of them really dive into what it's really like to sit in the mirror for two hours and become a different person who will ultimately be more well known than you are," Chapman said.

When Chapman and Smith sat down to write Divine/Intervention, Chapman immediately began to draw parallels between his life and Milstead's.

Chapman, now based in Philadelphia, was a prominent performer in New York's drag scene when he was selected for the third season of the reality competition show RuPaul's Drag Race. He was dismissed in notorious fashion after picking up another contestant during a final elimination round.

"No matter what I do in my life, the majority of people who interact with me is through this very edited, manipulated piece of reality television. I'm lucky to have done it.

"But Divine had the same problem. She couldn't escape the fact that she ate dog [excrement]," Chapman said, referring to a memorable scene from 1972's Pink Flamingos. "It just haunted her, no matter what she did. She would tour the country, release records, she had a family-friendly hit with Hairspray, and people still hounded her. . . . People gravitate toward these singular moments. What happens when something so small about your public persona becomes what people obsess over?"

In the show, Glenn enters his hotel room and is confronted by Divine.

Walter and Goodrich embody the divide between the public drag and private persona, their movements mirroring each other to convey their linked singularity.

"It's tedious," Goodrich said. "You move at the same time as two parts of the same person. Divine is strong and sharp, and Glenn is very fluid. I'm in dress and heels. My movements are very feminine. Glenn's movements are feminine in a different way."

Said Walter, "If we can get the movements right, it's going to be art."

Beyond the physical performance, each actor faced another challenge: Goodrich had to make an icon his own without parodying her, while Walter had to create a largely speculative character from YouTube videos. Milstead was a real person but not nearly as much in the public eye as Divine.

Walter started by finding Milstead's voice. Unlike Goodrich, a Divine devotee, he was not familiar the first drag superstar. "His voice is high and low at the same time. It floats, but there's this bass rumble underneath," Ryan said.

Goodrich has been inspired by Divine since he first donned a wig and heels in college. Drag queens use a part of themselves in their characters, he said; as Divine, he had to find the person beneath the garish makeup and snarling personality. "I always tried to maintain that humanity, which allows me to feel genuinely connected to Divine without becoming a mockery."

Goodrich received confirmation that he wasn't doing a cheap facsimile from Elizabeth Coffey, who appeared in Pink Flamingos and Female Trouble alongside the drag great. "You're playing the man I knew and it's beautiful," Coffey, who lives in Philadelphia, told Goodrich after watching a rehearsal.

Still, many of Divine's fans didn't know the man.

"She was on the verge of success" - Hairspray had just been released. "How sad is that?" Chapman said. "When movie stars die, our image of them becomes very specific. When we think of Marilyn, she's in the white dress. When we think of Judy Garland, she's gingham. When we think of Divine, we see the glamorous monster in the red dress, with the gun in her hand. All of these images, that's not who these people were. We immortalize them as a singular image for the rest of the time."

StartText

Divine/Intervention

Thursday to Aug. 2 at Voyeur,

1221 St. James St. Tickets: $20. 800-838-3006 or www.thedivineplay.com.EndText

215-854-5909@mollyeichel

See DIVINE on C6