BWW Reviews: THE ALL-NEW ANITA GOODMAN EXPERIENCE: SEASON FINALE at the Jewel Box Theater

I love a good drag show.  There, I've said it.  When all the elements of good music, glitzy costumes and performers with well thought out characters and storylines hit the stage, you cannot ask for a better evening.  This is why bad drag shows are all the more painful to me.  Unfortunately my attendance at the Season Finale of "The All-New Anita Goodman Experience" fell more into the latter category.

Miss Anita is billed as a "real life Tootsie" and the show as a combination of satire, comedy, improv, and burlesque into a never-before-seen theatrical confection.  And all that is there.  For those that have never seen one of her shows (as I had not before now) it's structured like a talk show with Miss Anita as the host along with her trusty sidekick Cassie O'Hara.  And once a month they gather some outrageous Seattle talent together as their guests for the evening.  Secrets are revealed, numbers are performed and the fur flies.

Now I should say that not every part of the show failed for me.  The burlesque number from Miss Lyla la Couer was wonderful set to the "Guys and Dolls" song "Take Back your Mink" and sung by la Couer herself.  And Josh Hartvigson as Gary Gloryhole was hilarious and one of the few moments where one of the storylines for the evening worked.

The problem was that the rest of the show was unfocused and chaotic with performers trampling all over each other (verbally and physically) creating a mish mash of a show.  Too many bits trying to take root, too many characters to keep track of (especially for those who are not familiar with previous shows) and at times just too many people on that tiny little stage.  They say a lot of it is improv but good improv still needs focus and I saw very little there.  There were criss crossing stories about long lost children, embezzled charity funds and illegal marijuana sales and none of them really paid off.  In fact that last one was mentioned at the top of the show and then abandoned. 

This leads me to something I touched on before, those of us not familiar with the show.  There were people in the audience who were getting into it but they seemed to have fore knowledge of what was being offered.  For the rest of us, I'm not sure how we were supposed to get ourselves up to speed.  It's seemed like much of the show was one big in joke and we were not let in on the humor. 

All of which led to an evening which I can only describe as a train wreck.  And while there were moments where the performers did their best to crawl forth from the wreckage, it amounted to an impossible task in the hour long show.  As I said, I had never seen a performance of "The Anita Goodman Experience" before so maybe this was an off night or maybe you really do need to be in the in crowd to get it.  But without that background the show fell harder than a 6'5" drag queen in 6" heels.  I can definitely say it was an "experience".

"The All-New Anita Goodman Experience" performs monthly at the Jewel Box Theater at the Rendezvous but is off for the summer.  But you can still catch video of previous performances and get information on upcoming shows at www.theanitagoodmannexperience.com.

Photo credit: Debora Spencer Photography

 

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