"Affair" entertains with no strings attached

Author: Dana Walters

Judith Dry '09 built her senior work, "A Black Tie Affair," upon a large foundation of cross-dressing in the arts. Since Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night," identity and gender confusion have been a staple of theater and film. Charlie Chaplin, Tony Curtis and Dustin Hoffman all donned skirts and slips when bowties and boxers were more the norm for members of their sex. Dry might not have Chaplin's finesse with slapstick or Curtis' ability to deliver a line, but she certainly holds enough humor, or as she claims, "charisma," to command a stage - for 45 minutes at least.

"A Black Tie Affair" chronicles the character Judy-Barbra's attempt to recapture an adolescence in which, she decides, life would have been far easier if she had just been a boy. This gender-switching role provides Judy with the hilarious obstacles that give the play its appeal. Episodes such as the dilemma of swimwear as a boy/girl and a college party that elicits intense penis envy occupy the stage, but the real action of the show turns out to be Dry herself, a one-woman example of what happens when someone with the power of wild zeal, uninhibited face-contortion and unbridled energy is given the opportunity to create.

All throughout, she jumped and beamed across the small platform, consuming it in her insane, vigorous way. Her personality was just enough to follow through on the promise of entertainment, overshadowing the unfortunate reality that gender identity-based humor must be highly original to overcome its great and long legacy. The performance's short run time allowed most to quietly ignore this overbearing truth, and everyone who attended could laugh and delight in her antics without having to confront this realization. The perfection of Dry's show, therefore, lay in its timing.

The experience of watching Dry prance about the stage - at one point, in a purple boa and sparkly one-piece, and at another, in eleven-year-old boy drag - was akin to the experience of trying to pin a label upon the show itself. Not quite cabaret, musical or play, the performance defied all identity, with the same stubbornness that Dry herself exhibited in refusing to wear one outfit for more than five minutes. With song, dance and multiple personalities, the show incorporated a bit of everything, most likely because Dry herself incorporated a bit of every emotion and transgression into her act. She threw temper tantrums like the best toddler, held her microphone in a delicate position to mock what she sorely lacked and explained her lesbian realizations with Jesus looking over her shoulder. Maybe it wasn't cohesive or sane - locked together only by the sometimes-uncomfortably high pitch of resounding vibrato - but Dry's "A Black Tie Affair" made a concoction of insanity look like a whole lot more fun. Trying to piece together the "story," after all, creates dizzying trouble, while sitting complacent in the presence of the madness lets the viewer leave with a brief respite for the mind. As an "affair," it works - asking for laughter without a drop of commitment.