Cleopatra, the Musical

Is John Fisher trying to see how much half-baked silliness he can pass off before people get wise? Cleopatra, the Musical, his parody of just about everything written or filmed about Caesar and the Nile queen, has all the camp elements you'd expect from the man who wrote Barebacking! and Medea, the Musical-- except humor. Cleopatra is a lithe drag queen played by Jeffrey Meanza who manages to sleep with Caesar (Christopher Herold), Marc Antony (Laura LeBleu), and Caesar's wife, Calpurnia (Maritza Exarchos), yet still finds time to sing clever rip-offs of old songs like "My Funny Valentine" and "Blue Moon." Just before Caesar's assassination, Cleopatra gives birth to a young Lord Fauntleroy brat who's destined, as the emperor's illegitimate son, to rule Rome. Herold plays the boy with a fierce bullheadedness; he's the only evidence of real comic talent on the stage. Everyone else is just smirk-worthy. Two singers have excellent, well-trained voices -- Exarchos and LeBleu -- but the rest of the cast walks through the songs. The crowd nevertheless goes wild after every ridiculous number. Why? In spite of his following, sometimes Fisher is just an SNL writer with an encyclopedia.