"My throat is worth more than a Queen."

I had the privilege of seeing the best play ever tonight, courtesy of my new gay friend. Monsters and Prodigies: A History of the Castrati. The funniest, strangest, most surprising play ever to appear before my eyes. A hot and horny centaur, braying after a plump and bashful castrati. A two-headed barber/castrator. A horny freak-imbecile, slave. A queeny and dictatorish piano player. They all come together to tell the story of the Castrati in Baroque Italy. The Castrati were castrated as boys so that they could retain their soprano voices well into manhood. The play centers around one Castrati's forced castration ( by the two-headed barber), his rise in prominence, and his pitiful demise when the Castrati, and all the decadence of the time, is cast off for more worthy pursuits. It doesn't sound funny at all, but it's super campy and sexually charged which lightens the mood. There is hardly any set design, but there's so much going on on-stage, not to mention the over-the-top costumes, and nobody has time to think about the set. It has amazing energy, everything is happening at once: braying centaur in the background (and he is fine!), beautiful opera by pudgy castrati, bickering two-headed barber fighting itself, slave grabbing his crotch uncontrollably, piano-player screaming for them all to shut up. And then someone in the audience stands up and demands that they stop the show because she's offended and everything explodes (dinner rolls fly through the air!) and you're sure that it must be a part of the show, but still you wonder... The performances are phenomenal, the singing gorgeous. Catch it if you can. Tonight was the last night of three-night run in San Francisco. Now off to research the Castrati...