Maria Callas’s problem was being too much of everything: too much of a serious actress, too much of a prima donna and too much of a scandal machine. How we long for another singer of such delicious excess! Anthony Roth Costanzo, who showed his own taste for excess last year when he played all the roles in Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro, seems a fitting choice to take on the diva of all divas. The problem with Galas is that it isn’t quite enough of anything, be it comedy, melodrama or opera. Its most obvious contemporary comparison is Oh Mary, but unlike Cole Escola’s Broadway smash, Galas doesn’t turn the comedy dial up high enough on its central figure, instead descending into a series of self-serious monologues about art that would be more in place in a straightforward biopic.
Charles Ludlam’s Galas was written in 1983, six years after Callas’s death and four years before the writer’s own, from complications due to AIDS. Like many older comedies, it suffers from a certain trapped-in-amber quality. What once was innovative is now stale; popular culture has absorbed the avant-garde so thoroughly that the latter looks quaint by comparison. Unlike Oh Mary, Eric Ting’s production doesn’t dial up the ridiculousness far enough to give Galas a true comedic edge for a modern audience. After years of living in the Drag Race extended universe that is queer pop culture, a full-length drag homage to Callas isn’t all that innovative.
Galas sees its diva through her meeting and marriage with her husband-manager Meneghini, through her eventual success (and then failure) at La Scala, her affair with Aristotle Onassis and ends with her lonely death after she’s replaced by Jackie Kennedy. The first half had energy and charm, even if its comedy never rises above the expected. We get gags that now seem rather passé: bad Italian accents, jokes about bottoms, a sassy gay Pope, ad libs that recur whenever La Scala is mentioned (“La Scalaaaaaaaahhh”). But around the midpoint, Galas stalls and sputters. A lengthy yacht scene with Onassis—played à la Austin Powers by Caleb Eberhardt—had the dubious distinction of making a drug-addled orgy seem more befuddling than scandalous. We didn’t even see Madam Galas caught in flagrante in the lifeboat with Sock. Maybe it’s because we live in a post-scandal age, but it all felt surprisingly tame. By the end, the comedy leaches away, and we are left with Galas’s somber musings and an operatic death at her own hand. It was far too sad an ending for a show that also included a lisping Pope in 7-inch silver Pleaser boots spanking a mesh-shirted attendant. But Ludlam was writing during the AIDS crisis; far-too-sad endings were unfortunately far too familiar.
This revival does have its cast going for it—the ensemble knows how to do zippy broad comedy, with nice turns from Samora la Perdida, who was scene-stealing as Wagner-loving Pope Sixtus VII, decked out in a bedazzled miter and trading barbs with Galas. This diva-off was the highlight of the evening. La Perdida returned as both a La Scala mob man and the scenery (and pen-cap) gnawing Ilka Winterhalter, on board Soc’s yacht to write an absolute hit piece on Galas for Time mag. Mary Testa, as former-singer-turned-maid Bruna Lina Rasta, had perfected her exasperated eye rolls to delightful comic effect. And Carmelita Tropicana, in drag also as Galas’s husband, Giovanna Battista Mercanteggini (based on Callas’s real husband Giovanni Battista Meneghini), was another delight, each line wrung dry of comedy by the time Tropicana had delivered it.
The singing is kept to a minimum—only four short excerpts—which is a real shame; Costanzo’s voice is sounding sweeter and richer than it has in recent years, and he squeaked out a hilarious cracked high note during a brief Casta Diva excerpt that hinted at some vocal comedy that might have been. The fault is in the writing; as Galas, Costanzo is capable and compelling. He bears more than a passing resemblance to Callas and has captured much of her always phony-sounding mid-Atlantic drawl, even though at times he veers into Julie Andrews territory. He looks glorious in Jackson Wiederhoft’s costumes, which were splendid. One black cocktail confection had tulle spheres on the rear and wrists; this was Cruella de Vil drag, had she dispensed with Dalmatians and set her sights on the neighbor’s standard poodles. Elsewhere, he sported a wine-colored drop-waist ballgown as wide as he was tall.
But Costanzo’s earnest Galas was often at odds with the ludicrous caricatures that surrounded her, and the ludicrous caricatures are much more fun. He seems to respect his character too much to commit to a more outré satire of her—a noble impulse perhaps, given how much Callas suffered under the eyes of the media, but not always the most entertaining one.
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