The Wild Party

It’s 1928 Manhattan. Queenie, a beautiful but jaded Vaudeville artiste lives with her lover, Burrs, a blackfaced minstrel performer. In an effort to lift their stale relationship, they decide to throw a wild party. As night descends, an eclectic mix of characters arrive, including Queenie’s conniving rival, a cocaine-sniffing bisexual playboy, a washed-up heavyweight boxer, a brother act, a has-been diva, a naïve 14-year-old, a lesbian actress and her drug addled girlfriend.

With music, drugs and alcohol flowing, the revelers’ artifice falls away and their most desperate desires emerge. What started as a whim to lift a lazy Sunday descends into a frenzied orgy. A tender romance blossoms amid the chaos, but not everyone is happy and someone will be dead before the night is over.

The musical has never before been performed in the West End, while the on-Broadway production in 2000 featured Toni Collete and Mandy Patinkin in the lead roles. The show pushes the boundaries of sexual and social acceptability, inviting its audience to gorge themselves in a feast of orgies, opium and moral destitution.

A dark, sensual, and glittering musical. LaChiusa has written several tuneful, witty, and character driven songs, which George C. Wolfe has expertly arranged and staged around the narrative provided by the source material; an interesting story gets told in appealing music and believable dialogue.