starlady | Beardo.

Beardo. Book and lyrics by Jason Craig, music by Dave Malloy. Dir. Patrick Dooley.

I went to see this with a large group of people celebrating our friend M's birthday (side note: the Bay area is way too small), and in short, it was about as awesome as you could hope a rock musical about Rasputin would be.

Rasputin was a weird guy, and everyone in the show is constantly telling him that, but I was impressed with the way the show was able to exploit all the weirdness while remaining--serious is not the right word. Let me put it this way: at the end of the second act an entire chorus of Russian peasants and proletarians sings about their need for a revolution, and the show closes, not with Rasputin's murder, but with the Tsar and Tsarista facing a tribunal of their former subjects, and these things feel like natural and inevitable outgrowths of what has come before. Much of what comes between is hilarious, whether in a totally bleak or in a totally strange way. Also, there is an orgy with Rasputin, noblewomen, and nuns (who are male actors in drag) in thongs. I also appreciated the fact that Rasputin attempting to sex people up was not just heterosexual. And the aristocrats who kill him dress up in leotards and tutus to do it.

I am failing to convey how awesome this show was in a variety of ways, but it really was awesome: hilarious, absurd, pointed, and really well-acted. The music was great, and all the actors also double as musicians on various instruments, and it was pretty awesome. (The Shotgun Players: really great.) The strangeness of Rasputin's life and career are only amplified by the times in which he lived, and vice versa, and I think the show gets that.