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Boystown's Own 'Snow White and the Seven Drag Queens' Hits the Road

By Ariel Cheung | August 25, 2015 8:42am
 Colby Cameron Holt (from l.), Casi Maggio and John Gilmour star in
Colby Cameron Holt (from l.), Casi Maggio and John Gilmour star in "Snow White and the Seven Drag Queens," a Boystown-grown musical hitting the road after three successful seasons.
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Provided/Shannon Jenkins

BOYSTOWN — The cast of "Snow White and the Seven Drag Queens" is whistling while they work it all the way to the East Coast.

The first Boystown-grown musical to travel outside the city, "Snow White" will play a one-night-only show Tuesday in Provincetown, Mass. The production will test the waters in the popular LGBTQ vacation destination before deciding whether to tour the show on a regional level, said Tony Lewis, MidTangent Productions artistic director.

Lewis tweaked the script for Tuesday's show to add nods and winks to Provincetown. The "neighborhood-centric" script could be rewritten to include references for different "gayborhoods" in cities like Cincinnati or San Francisco if the show does go on tour, Lewis said.

 Part of the cast of
Part of the cast of "Snow White and the Seven Drag Queens."
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MidTangent Productions/Colin Davis

In June, Lewis was vacationing in Provincetown when he met the owner of The Crown and Anchor, a six-bar venue that quickly signed on to stage the show.

"If you've ever seen Hydrate [nightclub], [the stage] is not large, so it's cool to see the show growing that way. We're used to playing a 12-by-8 space, and now we have to spread out," Lewis said.

"Snow White and the Seven Drag Queens" opened in 2009 at Hydrate Nightclub, 3457 N. Halsted St. The parody jukebox musical tells the story of seven queens and their roommate Snow White, who is declared "the most fabulous in the eyes of the gays," much to the chagrin of evil Malificent.

The 2014 revival was a smash hit, with sold-out runs both in 2014 and this year. Only four Chicago shows remain: Sept. 4, Oct. 2, Nov. 6 and Dec. 4.

"It's really been a whirlwind," Lewis said.

After almost two years, "we all know the show so well, we're all good at rolling with the punches. We're keeping each other on our toes — this show really lends itself to that," said Colby Holt, whose alter ego Tequila Mockingbird has played Malificent's mirror, Doc and, currently, Happy over the past two years.

It's a rare intersection of drag and theater, which "is what we love about it," Lewis said.

"That's why all the queens continue to do it — a lot of them come from theater, and they do lip-synching and variety shows [in drag], but this is actually a two-act musical," he added.

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