See all in Theater

Lyric's Or, mines the Restoration

Theater

Pioneer woman

The layers of unreality in Christine Jorgensen Reveals (at the Calderwood Pavilion through April 29) are like phyllo. Which is not to say that nothing is revealed in this theatrical re-creation of 1950s television — which turns out to be stagier than the stage. In 1957 the comedian Nipsey Russell conducted an interview with America’s first celebrity transsexual, Christine Jorgensen (nee George), who five years earlier had gone to Denmark for hormone treatment and an operation to change gender. (“Ex-GI Becomes Blonde Beauty,” screamed a headline.) The interview became a 1958 LP meant to be spun at parties when the guests were sick of Peggy Lee. Almost half a century later, actor Bradford Louryk came upon the album in a used-record store and something between a docudrama, an elegant drag show, and a sedentary ballet was born. In this exacting re-creation of the (somewhat rearranged) conversation between aw-shucks inquisitor and glamorous specimen, Louryk takes the stage as Jorgensen, impeccably groomed and posed, fur stole draped behind her, on a tall chair in what appears to be a television studio, complete with hanging mike and oval-screened, static-plagued TV. The African-American Russell appears on the small screen in the person of white actor (and co-creator) Rob Grace. Under Josh Hecht’s direction, both performers lip-synch, with uncanny precision, to the actual recording by the Tallulah-ish Jorgensen and Southern-tinged Russell, at the same time providing visual counterpart to every phoneme, snort, scratch, or hesitation. The show lasts only an hour — that’s all the interview there is — but it paints a fascinating picture of a curious nation pressing its nose against a woman articulate, ahead of her time, and calculatedly feminine.