Jon Sobel — Theater Critic

The missing piece is that today’s Arias lacks the voice to pull off even kitschy versions of tunes from any of the musical golden ages the show draws from. Thus the important cabaret element suffers. You really want to love this star, perfectly in his element, strutting his stuff with a shimmy and a wink. But the vocals fall short, evoking feelings that I didn’t want to be having at a show with such a warm glam glow.

Marc Kudisch delivers a heartbreaking spitfire of a performance as Rock, a right-wing conspiracy theorist convinced an imminent presidential election will bring about a second civil war. The always wonderful Karen Ziemba is his enabling wife Slipper (Rock and Slipper – what telling names!), an exemplar of that familiar kind of creature who goes along with others’ increasingly outrageous behavior to keep her (usually her) family together.

Ultimately this provocative but pessimistic show also indicts the community itself for passive acceptance – as someone so conditioned to going in the back door that when “seeing no back door he makes one for himself.” Still, there’s something potentially productive in gathering in these points of view, these experiences, this history in a communal, and sometimes slightly confrontational, artistic setting. For my part, as a “white” person I gleaned as much from the responses from the audience as from what was happening on stage – which was a lot.

Ultimately this provocative but pessimistic show also indicts the community itself for passive acceptance – as someone so conditioned to going in the back door that when “seeing no back door he makes one for himself.” Still, there’s something potentially productive in gathering in these points of view, these experiences, this history in a communal, and sometimes slightly confrontational, artistic setting. For my part, as a “white” person I gleaned as much from the responses from the audience as from what was happening on stage – which was a lot.