This week, two wildly different Bay Area productions offer new spins on icons of 20th-century pop culture. Here's a look at Drunk Drag Broadway's salacious take on Disney cartoonery, and "Mrs. Doubtfire"'s musicalized nanny buffoonery.
Wait: "Mrs. Doubtfire" without Robin Williams?
Indeed. And, in fact, with genial Rob McClure in the dual lead roles of divorced dad Daniel Hillard and phony nanny Euphegenia Doubtfire, this musicalized stage version of the family-friendly comedy, now at the Orpheum, is at least as enjoyable as the film.
McClure, who earned a Tony-nomination playing this same part on Broadway, is a whiz at physical slapstick, verbal timing, and Williams-esque vocal mimicry.
His unexpected riff as Donald Trump is one of several tweaks, along with the incorporating Siri and YouTube into the story to update the movie, set in the early 1990s, for the 21st century.
More importantly, McClure has a natural, lighthearted manner that's pretty much the antithesis of Williams' breathless impulsivity. He's believable as a struggling father and adorably silly in disguise.
The cushion-hipped costume prosthetics, by Catherine Zuber, are a hoot; the rubbery face mask, which makes him look like Robin Williams as Mrs. Doubtfire, is a mistake.
In the "Mrs. Doubtfire" film, as in many of his movies, Williams was believable only as stand-up comic Robin Williams, forcibly shoehorned into costumes and character summaries.
Williams' perpetual strenuousness is here matched only by Nik Alexander, who is unrelentingly campy as Daniel's hairdresser brother-in-law.
The show's songs (pleasant, verging on anodyne) and book, by Wayne and Karey Kirpatrick along with John O'Farrell (who created the equally goofy but more original "Something Rotten") hit all the familiar movie story points while making room for a few nonsensical, but entirely welcome, digressions.
McClure's loop-fueled hip-hop number kills. And a singing, butter-flinging Paula Deen is the superest sort of superfluous.
'Mrs. Doubtfire,' through July 28. $55-$251. Orpheum Theatre, 1192 Market St. (888) 746-1799. www.broadwaysf.com
Walt-ernative lifestyles
It's a small world after all.
So small, in fact, that an African lion cub, a Middle Eastern street urchin, and a fishtailed chick who somehow hails from both Denmark and the Caribbean can get tangled up in each other's business on the stage of a San Francisco queer bar.
That's the gist of the newly revised production of "Drunk Drag Dizney on Broadway," which opens a ten-performance debut run on July 11 at Oasis.
The engagement marks the return of impresario Jimmy Pittman-Moore's "Drunk Drag Broadway" musical parody series after a five-year, pandemic-initiated hiatus.
The show, featuring a cast of drag performers who sing live rather than lip sync, is a maximalist mash-up.
Not only does it hijack and hybridize the "The Lion King," "Aladdin," and "The Little Mermaid", it douses the legends in liquor and lubricants, framing them in the style of Comedy Central's "Drunk History" program.
Narrators Pittman-Moore, in drag as Chyna Maykit, and co-host Elsa Touche imbibe heavily, mixing and mangling the tales of our childhood heroes as an additional cast of nine (including Titus Androgynous, Kylie Minono, and Polly Amber Ross) enact their inebriated desecration of G-rated animation.
When Ariel warbles a deep-throated "Part of Your World," the world she's dreaming of is the Folsom Street Fair.
"When we first did 'Drunk Drag Dizney,'" Pittman-Moore told the Bay Area Reporter, "The first half was more of a revue and the Simba-Aladdin-and-Ariel story was the second part. This time we've written a full two-act plot."
Imagine what such ambition could do with a Peter Pan/Pinocchio scenario.
'Drunk Drag Dizney on Broadway,' through July 27. $30-$150. Oasis, 298 11th St. (415) 795-3180. www.sfoasis.com
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