Victor Victoria

Ushering in the new year, the touring production of Victor/Victoria arrived at the Colonial Theatre with Toni Tennille in the title role made famous by Julie Andrews in both the 1982 movie and the subsequent Broadway production. However, in a decade which has offered some sophisticated, humorous examinations of sexuality and gender, this musical, while mildly amusing, remains stuck in the past, seeming to think the new year is 1982, not 1999.

Blake Edwards' plot is standard gender bender fare: Victoria Grant, an Alabama soprano penniless in 1930s Paris, is persuaded by the gay Toddy (Jamie Ross) to pretend that she is really a man playing a woman. Who better, after all, to play a woman than a real woman? Victoria thus becomes 'Count Victor Grazinsky, Europe's greatest female impersonator and soon finds herself the reception of much acclaim. However, as she achieves success, she finds herself falling for King Marchan (Dennis Cole), a Chicago businessman/gangster, who in turn is anguished by his attraction to this 'man.' In this happy world, of course, King eventually learns to love beyond the boundaries of gender (albeit not before many gratuitous 'queen' plays on his name) and to surmount his underworld associates' objections. And all this while so many people come out of the closet you'd think it had fleas.

As a female female impersonator, Tennille, better known as half of '70s light-pop duo Captain and Tennille (of "Love Will Keep Us Together" and "Muskrat Love" fame), is passable as Victoria but lacks the je ne sais quoi that would justify the adulation her character supposedly receives. It seems hard to believe Gay Pah-ree could not produce any drag queens more fabulous than her "Victor." The idea of play-acting as a liberating experience has been done in plays from As You Like It and before, but Tennille hardly seems as emancipated as she claims to feel. She never experiences any trouble being Victor, but that is chiefly because she hardly acts any differently beyond wearing different clothes.

The supporting cast redeems the musical, preventing it from being a complete drag (and that pun reflects the musical's general level of humor). Admittedly, as the effete Toddy, Ross signals half his jokes and is forced to deliver some of the show's worst groaners--in response to Victoria's "I don't want to be a man anymore", he replies "Neither do I." But Dana Lynn Mauro as Norma, King's moll, elicits huge laughs with her brassy style, all malapropisms and mangled French ("You know French?" "Oh sure, I just don't speak it"). Flashy and loud, MaBBuro's vim shows up what Tennille lacks, and she was deservedly a crowd favorite. The burly A.J. Irvin, playing the stiff-lipped Squash, King's bodyguard, also has his moments.

Other flashes of sparkle were present. Backlit against Robin Wagner's magnificent Art Deco set, the choreography of the swing members made the big production number "Le Jazz Hot" smoulder. And the two-level, four-door hotel rooms of the secnd act's set did allow for a funny screwball hide-and-seek scene. But one good song does not a great musical make, nor can one humorous scene sustain an entire comedy. It all seems so meager in relation to the possibilities, which is what makes it so disappointing. The very fact that 'Victor' is supposed to be a major star should in itself call for more glamorous production numbers than we get.

In the end, Victor/Victoria is a musical stuck with a weak premise and bland songs which the cast valiantly tries to deal with but never quite conquers. It is adequately entertaining, but one minute out of the theater and you have to check the program to remember any of the songs. The musical may have come to the Colonial as part of the Broadway in Boston program, but with the cheapest seats going for $48.50, one might be tempted to go to the real Broadway.

Victoria's recurrent gag of hitting a spectacular glass-shattering high note sums this production up: an idea not inherently funny and repeated too often to the point of tiresomeness.