Howard Crabtree’s When Pigs Fly is perhaps one of the silliest, funniest and even bravest autobiographical scripts ever penned. Totally gay and wonderfully queeny, the odd synthesis of old-fashioned musical and screeching wildness set up camp at Masquerade Theatre, and there it spun a magical haze of hilarious hair-sprayed boys behaving like girls. Punny and irreverent, the songs about gay love attacked the right-wing agenda with all the long-nailed vengeance of a catfight out of control. Especially good was Matthew George, who purred out a recurring song in which he claimed to burn for such far-right codgers as Strom Thurmond: “Strom,” he sang, “go ask your mom if I can take you to the senior, senior, senior prom.” This sort of salacious political satire was made even better by a series of visual gags that included a lifelike Bette Davis dummy that was wheeled onto the stage in full Baby Jane drag. Pushing all sorts of important political buttons without indulging in a single moment of maudlin self-pity, Crabtree’s show and Masquerade’s wonderful production showed us how serious good raucous camp can be.
This article appears in Sep 21-27, 2000.