At the heart of the character
"Divine/Intervention" tells the story of a man and his drag queen alter ego.
Grab your wigs and fake boobs, guys: The glitter is in the audience for Divine/Intervention. The onstage show, which just opened at a nightclub called Voyeur (dark, dark, dark, with gigantic lavender-lit chandeliers), is actually a serious and often moving bio-drama about the counterculture icon known as Divine.
Divine's real name was Glenn Milstead, a fat, unhappy kid from a middle-class home in Baltimore. How he wound up starring in John Waters' schlock/shock movies - where he was raped by a giant lobster in Multiple Maniacs, and ate a dog turd in Pink Flamingos, and made it mainstream big in Hairspray - is incidental here. The real subject of this play - by E. Dale Smith, with an original concept by director Braden Chapman - is how a drag queen's psyche divides between the ego and the alter ego, between male and female, between actor and character.
The clever central device is that Glenn (Ryan Walter) and Divine (Bobby Goodrich) sit facing each other at their makeup table; what they see in the mirror is each other. Rage and self-pity, drugs and food, success and failure. Walter and Goodrich turn in two strong, impressive performances.
There are two fanboys (Terrell Green, especially good as Peggy, and Cosimo Mariano, who also plays Bernard, their manager). Firing people or abandoning them is always the preemptive strike. Devotion is kicked to the curb to demonstrate that "we're not such a nice person."
We meet, briefly, Glenn's exasperated, coddling father (Dean Carvin) and John Waters (Nicholas Scheppard) and hear a variety of voice-over TV and radio interviews as he begins to make it as an actor in a cameo role in Married . . . With Children. But Glenn's network success endangers Divine.
She feels threatened; he feels trapped. Divine tells Glenn, "I'm the only part of you that's remotely interesting." He replies "I've always been a character actor - you're a character." This divided self - obese or not, transgendered or not - may be a problem that is universal, if not so extreme as it is here.
What's missing from the show is enlivening wit. The world of drag is full of great puns. For obvious example, the title of this show; Goodrich's own drag character, Cleo Phatra; and Chapman's alter-ego, Mimi Imfurst, who has also produced RuPaul's Drag Race.
It's worth remembering that sentimentality is always a drag.
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"Divine/Intervention"
Through Aug. 2 at Voyeur, 1221 St. James St.
Tickets: $20.
Information: 800-838-3006 or www.thedivineplay.com