Forget about lip syncing for your life. In Drag: The Musical, which opened Monday at Off Broadway’s New World Stages, the queens must deliver actual vocals backed by a live five-piece band. This celebration of gender-bending camp is more polished, and entertaining, than you might expect, with an original score that’s heavily influenced by guitar-forward pop-rock as well as contemporary musical theatre. There’s not a synth-based club jam in the mix. Despite pedestrian lyrics (there are a lot of ‘oh la las’ and rote ‘play’/’slay’ rhymes) and director-choreographer Spencer Liff’s Pose-lite dance routines, the numbers are often elevated by Marco Marco’s garishly over-the-top costumes, which generate some of the show’s best laugh lines. There’s an admirable spirit of generosity at work, of playing to each performer’s strengths — whether it’s to deliver musical riffs or gently bitchy asides. (The hard-werking cast includes multiple veterans of RuPaul’s Drag Race, including Alaska Thunderfuck, who co-wrote the book and score and stars as a very demure, very mindful queen named Kitty Galloway.) Anyone coming for an epic roast battle is liable to be disappointed, either by all the obvious groaners or by swipes that are more kittenlike than catty. And who knows what they’ll make of the fact that the show’s only onstage romance is a straight one, featuring ex-New Kid on the Block Joey McIntyre.
Read my full review in the December issue of U.K.-based Musicals magazine.
DRAG: THE MUSICAL
New World Stages, Off Broadway
Running time: 2 hours (no intermission)
Tickets on sale through March 30, 2025
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