'Dragapella' sustains gender-bending humor in robust debut

What a drag! (I mean that in a nice way.)

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Audio: Clips from Sicks in the City, by the Kinsey Sicks: • Cruise People Uglier Than You • Ad Nauseum • Dubya • MCI Requires the free RealPlayer

DETAILS

The Kinsey Sicks perform Dragapella! at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday-Feb. 2 and at 2:30 p.m. Feb. 1-2 at Zilkha Hall, Hobby Center for the Performing Arts, 800 Bagby. Tickets are $31 for Jan. 31 and Feb. 1 evening performances; all other performances are $26. Call 713-315-2525.

For connoisseurs of gender-bending comedy who find Dame Edna too tame, the Kinsey Sicks up the ante in Dragapella -- quadrupling the outlandish feminine allure while boosting it with considerable vocal skills and a grab bag of outrageous, often naughty, musical numbers.

Ben Schatz (as "Rachel"), Kevin Smith Kirkwood ("Trixie"), Irwin Keller ("Winnie") and Chris Dilley ("Trampolina") are billed as "America's favorite Dragapella beauty shop quartet." Bet you didn't even know we had one.

Well, apparently we do, and the Kinseys are it. Their pun-ishable name derives from sociologist Alfred Kinsey's 1-to-6 scale of sexuality, in which a 6 signifies exclusive homosexual behavior. Yet for all his exploration of human sexuality, Kinsey never discovered anything quite like this San Francisco-born act.

Their revue, which has drawn favorable notice off-Broadway and at Montreal's Just for Laughs Comedy Festival, is making its Houston debut through Sunday at Hobby Center's Zilkha Hall.

Glenn Casale, director of the off-Broadway edition (here directing Theatre Under The Stars' My Fair Lady at Hobby's Sarofim Hall) was in the audience at Wednesday's opening. Much of his staging remains from the New York run (the cast's onstage comments suggest the show is in constant flux), and Dragapella benefits from high energy, a brisk pace and some potent sight gags.

Schatz, who writes most of the new songs and parody lyrics, takes charge of the stage as robust and raunchy Rachel. She skips across the stage in a burst of girlish high spirits, gallumphing like one of the balletic hippos in Disney's Fantasia. Rachel also is prone to sudden fits of Miss Piggy-like temper. When she starts barking orders, she calls to mind a bulldog wearing too much makeup.

Keller's Winnie is comparatively restrained, the polite suburban homemaker of the group. Dilley's Trampolina exudes ebullience, blithely unaware of the ludicrousness of her hyperfemininity.

Oddly enough, while the others create broad parodies of women's roles, Kirkwood's Trixie registers as a genuine dish -- a vivacious and sassy femme fatale (with a big, belting voice to boot) who likely could fool a few unsuspecting gentlemen.

When they segue from I Enjoy Being a Girl into Macho Man, it's difficult to tell which extreme of gender identity makes a more absurd fit.

The pitfall is that a little of such over-the-top silliness goes a long way. With several turns, the primary appeal is the initial premise, meaning the rest of the song cannot possibly be as hilarious as the opening lines.

A hymn to pigging out at a Vegas hotel's all-you-can-eat buffet, and a send-up of Celine Dion and her soupy song that goes on and on, are among those that suffer the inevitable diminishing returns. The parody lyrics run from racy to raunchy to just plain tacky.

Yet most of the time, the show sustains itself through the cast's good humor, vocal skills and some pretty funny lyrics.

The opening title song, set to the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel's Messiah, amusingly describes the act as "barber shop meet Barbarella" and adds that the show is "more fun than salmonella." The finale, declaring that everyone wants to be a drag queen (and recruiting a volunteer from the audience to prove the point!) proclaims that the act was "once unthinkable" but is now "un-lip-synchable" -- a rhyme clever enough for Ira Gershwin or E.Y. Harburg.

In a few instances, the show even maintains its comic punch while making a serious statement. The Goin' to the Chapel wedding song includes an implicit plea for fairness with its repeated "but we cannot get married" refrain. Another number keeps its good humor while throwing its hands up at the hard-to-follow pharmacological regimen required to treat HIV.

The sole 100-percent-serious turn is a subdued ballad wishing hope and peace to an ailing friend. The fact that the quartet momentarily make us forget the wild wigs and garish costumes to consider only their humanity perhaps distills the point of the whole enterprise.

Dragapella

When: 7:30 tonight-Sunday, 2:30 p.m. Saturday-Sunday

Where: Zilkha Hall, Hobby Center, 800 Bagby

Tickets: $26-$31; 713-315-2525

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