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Banner file photo
Randy Roberts transforms into Bette, Cher and his own drag persona in a highly entertaining show. |
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Doing the divas
Randy Roberts brings Bette, Cher & himself to the stage
By Ann Wood
Banner Staff
Whether you are a gentleman — or a lady, for that matter — who prefers blonds, brunettes or redheads, Randy Roberts has got the show for you.
Roberts’ new show opens with Bette Midler shaking her trademark twin peaks and dancing away, sounding very much like the real deal with “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” and looking better than Bette ever did. Later, Cher appears out of the darkness, in a glittering high-cut dress. When the lights come up the audience goes wild as Cher belts out “Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down).” Finally there’s Roberts’ own drag persona, who resembles Ann-Margret, closing the show with a Liza Minnelli medley.
Roberts does the divas in a way that would make the women themselves green with envy. He performs his newest show at 9 p.m. Thursday through Sunday at The Crown & Anchor, 247 Commercial St., Provincetown. Tickets are $20.
Roberts, who has been performing since he was five years old, marks his 25th anniversary doing drag this year. He’s performed everywhere from Florida to Arizona, New York to Las Vegas. But don’t assume drag is all he does. Roberts started singing with the Key West Pops, half in drag, and also performed in the “Phantom of the Opera” outdoors there.
“I still like doing theater out of drag. I still want to do Broadway,” he says a few minutes after a show. “You know, I’m 43. I don’t want to be in the chorus.”
It makes sense that Roberts is a serious performer who doesn’t want to be stuck in a chorus or limit himself to drag. He attended a repertory high school and didn’t start dressing in drag until he began lip synching at gay bars. He didn’t sing for real at first because he didn’t think he could. That was until he chanced it, sang aloud, and took first place in a Key West contest.
Back on stage Roberts is telling Bette’s own jokes as well as Bette ever did.
“Welcome to another night of tits and tears,” she says. “I’m living proof. Big tits means big butts.”
Bette’s singing and dancing so well that the audience may get confused — is that really Bette?
Now Roberts is mugging Cher with the perfect amount of exaggeration. He’s got the audience singing “Turn Back Time” and laughing simultaneously. There’s a whole lot of leg going on.
“Hello, my little gypsies, tramps and thieves. Mostly tramps,” Cher says, and clicks her tongue.
He is having fun. It’s obvious when you see him on stage. And straight men should beware — Roberts’ women may pick you out and pick on you. But Roberts picks on himself too.
“Jeff, you looked scared to death. Never been this close to one before?” Bette says to one man.
“The drag is the fun part. All the costumes,” Roberts says, adding that New York-based pageant dressmaker Stephen Yearick makes them for him.
Roberts says that he started doing Cher because he looks and sounds like her and does Bette because “everyone told me to.” But that’s not all. Roberts has got some more characters that are not appearing this time around, as the ever-witty actor explains.
“Consuela is not here this year due to immigration problems,” he says. But don’t worry, she’ll be back.
awood@provincetownbanner.com
See the entire text in this week’s Banner.
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In the Arts
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Jun 22nd, 2006