For 13 years, aughties-decade audiences went bananas over the antics of Fresh Fruit—a drag-cabaret troupe that took over Boston’s Club Café with deliciously double-entendre-filled skits and spoofy, satirical songs that lampooned everything from gay culture to American society.
Of course, the political climate has never been more ripe for parody—so naturally, the group is returning to the stage this fall for the first time in six years with a new show: “Fresh Fruit Is…Born Again!,” back again at Club Café on select weekend dates from Friday, October 11 to Saturday, October 23.
For details, check out bitterbitchproductions.com or clubcafe.com.
Squint, though, and you’ll notice that underneath that makeup, the gender-bending boys look a little different.
“The world is screaming for this again,” says Fresh Fruit cofounder Michael Gaucher, whose Bitter Bitch Productions are seen frequently at Club Café. (Recent shows have included “The Menopausal Mermaid” and “Golden Girls: The Lost Episode” drag imaginings.) Gaucher and Rodney VanDerwarker, a fellow original Fruit, decided it was time to revive the group for the Trump era, when there’s simply too much material to pass up—and the importance of queer art feels more evident than ever.
“It’s like a live reality show going on in politics; it couldn’t be more absurd,” says VanDerwarker. “If those freaks didn’t have their finger on the nuclear button, it would be funny how ridiculous it is.”
This time, though, Gaucher and VanDerwarker, who performed in the cast during its original run from 2000 to 2013, decided that they wanted to stay behind the scenes. They’ll direct a new bundle of Fruits (including, full disclosure, this writer), resurrecting favorite musical numbers from shows past and introducing a slew of new, timely takes on well-known tunes. Other new Fruits include Andrew Child, Jaryd Towlson, and Brian Washburn. Joshua Roberts, an alum of Bitter Bitch’s “Golden Girls,” is artistic manager.
There’s plenty of hilarious intracommunity humor: For instance, the Fruit’s “Regret Tango” resets “Cellblock Tango” from the musical “Chicago” inside a gonorrhea-stricken gay gym. “Internet Killed the Gay Boy Bar”—a riff on the ‘80s pop hit “Video Killed the Radio Star”—bemoans the demise of such spaces in the age of Grindr.
Other selections are more pointedly political. “All Fake News,” a twist on “Don’t Nobody Bring Me No Bad News” from the musical “The Wiz,” takes on Trump for his preferred method of scapegoating and penchant for bald-faced lies. “Republican Girl,” meanwhile, reinvents Madonna’s “Material Girl” into uproarious commentary on the kind of greed-is-good mentality that dominated the Reagan era—and is everywhere to be seen in our current administration.
Consider it a kind of comedic catharsis. “I’m just so infuriated,” says Gaucher of the state of the nation. “At least I feel like I can do something to voice some of my frustration, because I don’t see people taking the action that I would want to take.”
Of course, Fresh Fruit has historically taken an equal-opportunity-offender approach to its bawdy humor. “We haven’t been very kind to liberals, either!” VanDerwarker clarifies. And too-sensitive souls probably aren’t the right audience for “Born Again,” which spreads its snark far and wide. “Joan Rivers always said, ‘never apologize for your humor,’” adds VanDerwarker. The Fruits don’t plan to start toning things down now.
That said, with all the sincerely ill-intentioned rhetoric already out there in the world, the Fruits want to be thoughtful about where they aim their pun-filled potshots. Certain things just aren’t worth joking about when the stakes in the real world are so serious. Besides, the power of queer art is its ability to galvanize action and energy through the act of shining a defiant, joyful light. So the show is packed with plenty of numbers offering pure escapism, like “Old Chicks,” which transforms Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies” into an anthem for the geriatric-snowbird set.
“Born Again” is all about giving audiences a place to laugh off a lot of steam, and leave a little motivated.
“If you can access someone’s emotions rather than their emotional intellect, I think you can move them further,” says Gaucher. “It’s also a safety valve. People can come in and just laugh, and not feel so panicked, morose, or despondent. They can laugh, and be like, ‘Yes! Thank you for making a joke out of this, because I can’t even handle it anymore.’”
The Fresh Fruits are back. How sweet it is!
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