Theater Review by Samuel L. Leiter . . .
I was bar mitzvah age in 1953 when the news exploded across the world that a former GI from the Bronx, a photographer named Christine Jorgensen (né George William Jorgensen, Jr.), had undergone a “sex change” operation in Copenhagen, Denmark, and become a glamorous woman.
Although there had been similar cases of gender reassignment surgery for years, this was the first to get such sensationalist traction in the mainstream media. Because Jorgensen presented as a highly attractive woman who dressed fashionably, carried herself with film star elegance, spoke in a husky, cultivated, actress-like voice, and was both witty and gracious, she became an instant celebrity, stirring worldwide curiosity regarding her condition. Seeking to capitalize on the enormous attention she was getting, Jorgensen developed a career as a cabaret performer, largely with the aid of a polished song and dance man named Myles Bell.
This is the background to Donald Steven Olson’s The Christine Jorgensen Show, a respectful but inadequate paean to the once-controversial transgender star, which played briefly at 59E59 Theaters in January, and is now on the downtown boards at HERE. For the first two thirds of its 90-minute runtime, it’s a more or less conventional play, with occasional infusions of music necessitated by the action.
It begins with a monologue by the demure Christine (Jesse James Keitel), set ten years after her big splash. Her blonde hair perfectly coiffed, and her lithe figure set off in capri pants, she looks every inch an idealized female of the early 1960s. Since she doesn’t mention her name, we have to assume she’s Christine Jorgensen as she talks about her success over the past decade, which began when no one talked about “you-know-what,” meaning sex. It’s a hyperbolic statement, but in this context, when society has changed so rapidly that she can now fully be herself and even lecture about it to college students, understandable. However, we are never told what exactly she’s getting at, since no mention of her physical alteration is made. Playwright Olson seems to think that the mere presence of someone we assume is “Christine Jorgensen” is all we need to know.
She then arrives at the studio of high-strung singer-tap dancer-pianist-songwriter Myles Bell (cabaret favorite Mark Nadler). Myles thinks Christine is there to try out for a new act he’s working on, but when she claims she can neither sing (which, when she tries, isn’t far from the truth) or dance, and is so stage shy she can barely smile, he wants to send her on her way. Only then, because the playwright prefers coyness to reality, does she tell him (and us) her name. Hearing it, Bell, desperate to promote his own career, reacts as if a well-stocked cash register fell into his lap. Given her face’s ubiquity at the time, his failure to instantly recognize her tests the limits of plausibility.
Eventually, Myles manages to teach Christine how to walk across the stage like a showgirl, to sing, and even to do a bit of tap dancing. At one point, she gives up and leaves, but eventually she returns, ready to make her professional debut at a club in Pittsburgh. Her act begins uncertainly, but then fills up the show’s entire remaining time, suggesting that this is a replication of Christine’s first-ever nightclub act. A good chunk belongs to the hammy Myles Bell, including a modest tap number before he falls and hurts his dodgy knee.
Much of The Christine Jorgensen Show is a clunkily written backstage drama, with a few references to contemporary events in Jorgensen’s life. For example, her being named Woman of the Year by the Scandinavian Societies of New York inspires a brief scene reflecting her acceptance speech. But for all the emphasis on Jorgensen’s preparing for and beginning a showbiz career, discussion of her trailblazing transgenderism, strangely, is left pretty much for the audience to discover on Wikipedia or somewhere similar.
Interestingly, the nightclub act, which bears a slight resemblance to the real thing, is a conventional one of song, dance, and patter, in which the star fails to provide self-referential commentary on the reason for her celebrity. Her claim to fame is common knowledge, this suggests; audiences go to see her, we might speculate, not because she’s exceptionally talented (she clearly is not), but because of the frisson of being so close to such an unusual creature, whom they can scrutinize closely for telltale signs of masculinity. Olson, however, avoids consideration of this dichotomy.
The Christine Jorgensen Show is a shoestring production, Riw Rakkulchon’s set being little more than a piano and a few pieces of tatty furniture. A tad more effort has been put into the minimal suggestion of the nightclub setting. Calvin Anderson’s lighting gets the job done under limited constraints. It appears that most of the design budget has gone into Suzanne Chesney’s picture-perfect apparel, in which the slender, blonde-wigged Keitel, looks smashing.
Michael Barakiva’s direction is too insipid to make this sow’s ear of a show into a silk purse, but he gets decent enough performances from his stars to sustain interest, even if they fail to knock it out of the park. Transgender actress Jesse James Keitel—a distant relative of Harvey Keitel—has a striking, porcelain beauty that outshines the grande dame appearance of the real Jorgensen. Keitel, like Jorgensen, is only a so-so singer (watch this brief documentary to see Jorgensen in action), relying on theatrical gumption to get the songs across. Her acting is similarly unexciting; could it be because she’s channeling Jorgensen’s self-consciously stagy personality?
Nadler gets plenty of opportunities to sing, tap, and tickle/pound the ivories. It doesn’t help, though, when he pushes Bell’s histrionics to extremes. Further, the melodically challenged musical pastiches Nadler co-wrote with Olson contrast, to their disfavor, with the brief interpolations of “A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody.”
There’s definitely enough of theatrical value in the story of Christine Jorgensen to provide the basis for a good movie or stage show. In fact, a 1970 film called The Christine Jorgensen Story got a decent review in the New York Times. I wish I could be as positive about The Christine Jorgensen Show.
The Christine Jorgensen Show. Through December at HERE (145 Sixth Avenue, at Spring Street). www.christinejorgensenshow.com
Photos: Jeremy Daniel