Like many of you, I spent most of Thursday reading depressing news stories about the future of the health care system. I hoped that an evening at Victor/Victoria would cheer me up; it didn’t. It’s been about twenty years since I’ve seen the 1982 film, but I remembered really loving the story of Julie Andrews disguising herself as a drag queen to achieve fame, inadvertently triggering the romantic interest of a minor-league Chicago gangster along the way. But the stage musical is weighed down by some half-hearted songs. (Composer Henry Mancini died before the show’s 1994 debut.) None of the leads in this production were particularly compelling, either, with many of the dialogue’s catty double entendres falling flat. (There were also some technical hiccups during the first act, though presumably that was a one-time thing.) The lone saving grace is squeaky Norma, the mob moll played with verve by Kristin Wetherington.
Victor / Victoria
