There’s no greater surprise hit in the theater right now than Cole Escola’s “Oh, Mary!,” which continues to gross over $1 million a week even with other actors replacing Escola in the lead role of Mary Todd Lincoln.
The enormous success of this play shows that Broadway should have been paying attention long ago to downtown comedies featuring drag performers. Charles Busch’s “Red Scare on Sunset” (1991) and “The Divine Sisters” (2010), as well as Charles Ludlam’s “Galas” (1983) and “The Mystery of Irma Vep” (1984), come to mind. The only thing these wildly anarchic works lacked to travel uptown was an adventurous producer.
Impresarios should make a trip to the Little Island where a brilliant revival of “Galas” opened Sunday at The Amph. Here’s a show that’s more than ready for Broadway.
For me, the original production of “Galas,” based on the life of Maria Callas, remains a theater high point. I will never forget Ludlam’s Maria Magdalena Galas emerging from a blast of smoke as the train roared onto the tiny stage at the Ridiculous Theatrical Company’s basement theater on Sheridan Square. Ludlam wasn’t only a great actor and playwright; he also could direct and often delivered astounding coups de theatre in that cramped space.
I might be committing an act of blasphemy by even suggesting that Anthony Roth Costanzo is even better than Ludlam in the title role. The famous counter tenor is credited here with “additional music selections” and they are remarkable. Ludlam didn’t sing in his “Galas.” Costanzo does in this revival and his delivery of such classics as “Casta diva” and “Vissi d’arte” is nothing short of phenomenal. Memory may have failed me, but I don’t remember the original production featuring so many musical interludes and short blasts of orchestral excerpts from operas to punctuate the comedy. It all works marvelously under the very flashy direction of Eric Ting.
The stylish sets by Mimi Lien and the operatic costumes by Hahnj Jang put to shame what’s typically produced at New York City’s other major outdoor stage, the Delacorte Theater in Central Park. Very diva-esque, Costanzo uses another designer, Jackson Wiederhoeft, for his costumes. These outfits are so good that a couple of them receive their own ovation when they first appear on stage.
Jang, however, tops anything Wiederhoeft has designed for Costanzo with his costumes for Pope Sixtus VII and the Prelate; in those two roles, Samona La Perdida and Austin Durant, respectively, do those outrageous duds full justice and then some. Galas meets her match in the pontiff who is a far greater diva than the opera singer. This gem of a scene begins with the royally bejeweled pope spanking the black-mesh-encased prelate. It continues with Galas’ maid Bruna (Mary Testa, being awesomely submissive) flagellating herself to show respect and then reaches comic nirvana with Pope Sixtus VII forcing Galas to kneel to kiss his ring.
As good as some of the boys are at doing drag, Carmelita Tropicana in the role of Galas’ husband, Giovanni Baptista Mercanteggini, shows that women can crossdress to great effect too.
Leaving The Amph, a fellow theatergoer made an interesting comment about “Galas.” He said to his date, “It’s a weird play. It begins as a comedy and then goes someplace else.”
Only rarely in “Oh, Mary!” do we see Mary Todd Lincoln as anything but a broad joke. Ludlam’s Galas is quite another creature. She emerges as a comic figure with glimmers of pathos from the moment she steps off that train from Naples to meet Mercanteggini, her future husband and manager. That balance between comedy and drama switches when she falls in love with the shipping magnate Aristotle Plato Socrates Odysseus (Caleb Eberhardt, being much better looking than Aristotle Onassis). She simply calls him Soc.
Since the death of Callas at age 53 in 1977, there have been a slew of movies and documentaries about her life. I’ve seen most of them, and arguably none is more insightful than “Galas.” Callas is reported to have died of heart failure, but Ludlam takes the view, as did director Franco Zeffirelli, that she committed suicide.
“Galas” is a great tragedy that packs several devastating comic punches.
