‘Georgia’ is engaging entertainment at MVT

Elvis impersonators, drag queens and white people from the South are often presented as characters to be laughed at rather than empathized with. New York playwright Matthew Lopez sidesteps those tired old tropes in his engaging off-Broadway comedy “The Legend of Georgia McBride,” which opened at Manoa Valley Theatre on Thursday.

Jeff Brackett stars as Casey, a young man passionately committed to his career as an Elvis impersonator even though he’s performing to empty houses in a run-down bar. Putting a Papa John’s pizza on his debit card results in his rent check bouncing for the second month in a row.

Casey learns his wife is pregnant, then the bar owner (Robert S. Hunt) tells him he’s been replaced by a drag show — but he can stay on as a bartender and probably make more in tips than he did as Elvis.

Opportunity knocks when one of the “girls” is too drunk to perform and Casey is ordered to do the number instead — or be fired. What follows is a series of nicely choreographed scenes that show a man who is initially very bad at doing the “boys will be girls” thing becoming very good at it.

Adopting the stage name Georgia McBride, Casey discovers that he enjoys the challenges of being a female impersonator. The older queen, Miss Tracy Mills (Miguel K. Pa‘ekukui), takes him on as a protege. The bar owner embraces his own new role as drag show emcee; eventually he’s wearing a gold lame suit.

Casey makes so much money that he’s able to pay all his outstanding bills, but with financial success comes two problems: Casey’s wife doesn’t know what he’s doing, and he’s concerned people are going to think he’s gay (Casey uses a slur that can’t be printed in the newspaper).

Then the other queen, Roxy (Sean Ramsey), gives Casey a scathing lecture on the difference between being a straight man who performs as a female impersonator for the money and being a gay man for whom drag is a 24/7 lifestyle despite the horrific violence homophobes inflict on them. Does Casey know anything about the history and traditions of drag queen culture? Does he know the significance of Stonewall, a reference to the 1969 riots in New York that sparked the gay rights movement in America? Casey hasn’t got a clue, but he gets the message.

The intensity of the scene ensures the audience also gets the message.

Brackett convincingly ricochets between serious and silly, between being Casey and being Georgia McBride. Pa‘ekukui hits all the right spots — hilarious here, poignant there — as the tough yet vulnerable aging queen.

The drag show finale runs longer than it needs to but brings everything to a colorful close.

“The Legend of Georgia McBride” is intended for adults and teens mature enough to handle the subject matter. No prior knowledge of traditional “drag queen” culture is needed to enjoy it.