Everyone knows it takes more than a pinch of ruthless egotism to make it to the top of the theatrical tree, but Diva: Live From Hell takes that demonic compulsion and ratchets it up to eleven.
A camp, clever and catty musical comedy with a gothic twist.
The premise is simple: Desmond Channing, president of his high school drama club, is confined to hell for his sinful act of vengeance against new boy Evan, a drama pro from New York whose transfer threatens to topple Desmond from his theatrical throne. We watch as he tells his story, a play within a play, while he's hopelessly trapped in an eternal loop of torment, forced to relive his tragic demise.
A dark plot no doubt, but from darkness springs light. The show is crammed full of hilarious musical theatre references that had me belly laughing. There were, of course, well-trodden gags (another Wicked pastiche with pointy black hat and billowing cape), but the side-splits came from the more obscure and off-centre references. They were all delivered at whiplash speed with no concession for addled memories. If you got them you got them, if you didn’t… tough!
That bitchy, keep-up-or-miss-out attitude in the script was deliciously mirrored in our anti-hero. Luke Bayer was devilishly superb as the bitter, self-serving diva Desmond Channing, a triple threat, small stage starlet who was, on the one hand, desperate to impress us with every performance trick at his disposal, from fierce vocals to Broadway tap dance, and on the other hand was driven to the heinous acts of jealousy and revenge that drag this one-man masterpiece to its twisted conclusion.
Bayer captured Desmond’s ruthless self-centredness with aplomb, drawing huge laughs with a mere pout of his lip or roll of his eyes. He treated everyone, including his long suffering pianist and her band, Jerry and Her Men (another glorious catch it or miss it pun) with contempt and disdain, but also with such wit and sincerity that you’re charmed and shocked in equal measure.
Rolling through a whole cast of characters with deft shifts of body and voice, Bayer coaxed wonderful humour out of teen idol Evan, and genuine sympathy for Desmond’s cruelly maligned sidekick Alison Hewitt. His control of voice was spellbinding, never once leaving you in doubt about who you were watching. A camp, clever and catty comedy with a gory, gothic twist. A must for all musical theatre fans; to miss it would be a sin.
