Playwright: Dan Savage. At: Hell in a Handbag Productions at Mary's Attic, 5400 N. Clark St. Tickets: 800-838-3006 or www.handbagproductions.org; $17-$35. Runs through: July 10, with an American Sign Language-interpreted performance 7:30 p.m. on June 6
Leave it up to someone like famed sex-advice columnist and activist Dan Savage to reset The Miracle Worker in a gay drag bar. The result is the hilarious MIRACLE!, and you'll never look at William Gibson's 1959 drama about Annie Sullivan's education of deaf/blind child Helen Keller the same way again.
MIRACLE! makes a very amusing and wry Midwest debut courtesy of Hell in a Handbag Productions. Savage's revised 2012 spoof ( which harkens back to his days with the late Seattle troupe Greek Active ) fits perfectly with Hell in a Handbag's output, though it also carries a far more serious tone to what many fans of Chicago's premiere camp theater might be accustomed to.
MIRACLE! takes a while to get going, since Savage extends the exposition to explain the bizarre situation how a deafblind drag queen like Helen Stellar ( a whirlwind Steve Love ) came to be a regular performer at The Brass Connection. We also get some pointed jabs at the generational divide in the gay community as elder drag queens like Gloria Blaze ( a wonderful Ed Jones ) and Sissy Jizzmor ( an equally good Jamie Smith ) are appalled at the proud ignorance of newcomer Bailey Legal ( a very bitchy Kristopher Bottrall ).
Then we have to slog through four drag numbers including Stellar's "drag mother" Crystal Pain ( played with plenty of authority by David Cerda ) as she's backed up by the strapping bar boys of Joshua Peterson and Christopher Young before Stellar finally makes a very uncomfortable appearance on stage lip-synching to "I Will Survive." The fact that there was almost no laughter during this number on opening night could mean that director Derek Van Barham and Love need to work on finding funnier physical bits, or that the audience was too nervous at being perceived as insensitive tittering through this performance meltdown.
Thankfully, the lesbian teacher Annie Sullivan ( a smart and no-nonsense Elizabeth Lesinski ) arrives on the scene to determinedly educate Stellar on how to communicate and behave. Savage has the utmost respect in depicting the Sullivan-Stellar struggle, which is played fairly straight despite the camp situation.
This leaves much of the raunchy humor to the surrounding drag queens and lesbians who populate the Act II bar known as The Clam Bake. It's here that Sullivan cloisters Stellar away to properly teach her, and where they encounter the supportive drag king owner Hershey ( Caitlin Jackson ) and the drag-disdainful lesbian performance artists Beth ( Sydney Genco ) and her girlfriend, Winter ( Rachel Hadlock ).
Savage follows Gibson's dramatic template closely, so Stellar's breakthrough moment is surprisingly as touching as it is funny. This all makes Hell in a Handbag's MIRACLE! a true winner that honestly makes you rethink a classic through an irreverent and equally critical queer lens.