by Billy McEntee
For those mourning that Dina Marina’s Jeopardy video is no longer on YouTube — in which the bonkersly clever drag queen puts on disguises to return again, and again, to the famed game show only to lose, deliciously — there may be a single antidote, one and one alone: see the drag superstar live in Provincetown.
Or, Pro-VONCE-town, as she calls it in her mumbo jumbo. The illustrious icon returns to Ptown for her nineteenth season, and her newest show Sub-Standards is now running at the Crown & Anchor (ancher, to Dina Martina). Over sixty minutes, the illustrious icon performs songs (badly), superimposes her face on famous movie characters (sketchily), and throw on costumes (haphazardly). It’s all part of her delightfully deranged gimmick as an entertainer trying her best, and a mother doing her worst — an opening monologue narrates her experience getting ready for a Hoarders taping, which led her to find her daughter submerged in piles of trash in a back room. You can’t always be a magnetic stage presence and practical housewife.
Dina Martina employs her infamously bizarre vocabulary, which includes misshapen vowels and switched soft and hard G’s. She describes events that happened ages a-jo, tells us to tell others to jet to her show, and says more into a Red Bull can she mistakes as her mic, which means we miss those lines.
Sounds delirious? Unruly? Crazed? The show is, spectacularly so. Dina Martina’s summer show blends birthday tributes to Margaret Cho (who’s born in December) with invented family histories, original songs, and — per the event website — unnecessary videos.
And yet, what’s more necessary than some well-crafted foolishness? Dina Martina brings it in spades. Come jet it while you can.
Sub-Standards
The Crown & Anchor
247 Commercial Street in Provincetown, MA
Tickets for shows through September 16 here
