Glimpses of the actors’ costumes dot the drab Silver Spring, Md., rehearsal space. Atop gray floors are velvety pink stilettos; benches are lined with corsets, wigs, and the odd Celsius or Red Bull. When places are called for a run-through of the show’s climactic song “Breaking Free,” someone in thigh-high go-go boots quips, “I’m gonna break something.”
This production of “Highball Musical” — inspired by the Disney Channel’s “High School Musical” films that debuted in 2006 — will be performed for three shows at Dupont Circle LGBTQ+ bar JR’s. A temporary stage will be constructed. Cheerleader, basketball player and academic decathlon-er costumes will be bedazzled. And all performers (over a dozen) will be in full drag.
It’s the 11th show from Highball Productions, a local company that combines drag artistry and musical theater. Since 2019, the group has staged shortened productions like “Shecago,” “Queeney Todd” and “Slaytress” — names altered from the popular musicals as both a satirical and legal matter, following a cease-and-desist order. The shows are heavily adapted from their original scripts, with plenty of lip-syncing, pop culture references and dramatic gags to suit a bar audience — which is why you can expect more twerking in this rendition of “Get’cha Head in the Game” than in Zac Efron’s version.
Patrons can also expect multiple versions of Sharpay, the fabulous pink-clad villain of the original trilogy. It’s a role particularly popular among drag queens, explains director and Highball Productions co-founder Citrine. There’s only one Troy (the jock turned theater kid played by Efron in the original movie) and Gabriella (the golden-voiced new girl played by Vanessa Hudgens), but it “just didn’t feel right to me to cast only one Sharpay to do all those great songs she has,” says Citrine — and for one of them, she cast herself.
When she and two other local drag artists staged a production of “The R*cky Horror Show” five years ago, they didn’t intend to start a full-fledged company (now led by four producers). But after their follow-up, “H*irspray,” they realized the formula worked; “C!nderxlla” was improved by a number involving fire eating, “Shecago” benefited from a confetti cannon, and “Twerkules” was made better for its generous use of a muscle suit and lascivious half-goat costume.
“Drag is already inherently very theatrical, so it makes sense that drag and musical theater would be a great combination,” Citrine says. “Some drag shows will incorporate Broadway musical theater songs here and there, but they don’t put on the show, storytelling from start to finish. Going that extra step sets us apart.”
Despite being involved with Highball since its inception, Citrine is making her directorial debut with “Highball Musical.” It also has one of the biggest casts in the company’s history, which means trying to fit huge dance numbers into a venue that, as Citrine notes, is “basically a hallway.” Because of the bar’s operating hours, the cast is limited to one rehearsal in JR’s itself. Luckily, many of the artists, including Troy actor Baphomette, perform at the venue regularly.
“Once you learn the layout and get used to it, it’s a lot of fun,” he says. It’s his fifth production with Highball, where he says he’s been happily typecast as the “lovable himbo.” “Every night is different because you never know how many people will be there and how that will affect things.”
Unlike in past productions, the lip-synced songs and dialogue won’t be taken from just one musical; the production spans the whole “High School Musical” trilogy, though most of the talking scenes and many of the less popular songs were cut.
“While it is theater, it’s still a drag show,” Citrine says. “It is a bar, after all, and people will likely be drinking. Normally when people are a little inebriated, half their attention span is gone. Are they really going to pay attention to an acting scene between two characters for 10 minutes? Probably not.”
But “Highball Musical,” while full of gags, raunch and references to hookup apps, relies on a source material that was already, for all its sanitized Disney moments, pretty campy. It was a franchise in which members of the cast say they saw themselves reflected long before Highball was created — and before they came into their own identities.
“I was, in my own way, projecting my dysphoria [on Troy],” says Baphomette, a trans man. “But it was a joyful thing. It was a yearning that I couldn’t really articulate, that now that I’m doing this show, I get to articulate and satisfy at the same time.”
To Citrine, the themes of the musical — staying true to yourself, no matter the social consequences — are reflected in the foundation of drag itself.
“You want to do this thing [drag] that isn’t necessarily socially acceptable, and we’re able to use this show as a way to say like, ‘Hey, like we are breaking this ‘Status Quo,’ if you will, of those gender norms,’” she says, referencing a song from the film. The original movie, she says, presented “these themes in a way that in 2006 was already groundbreaking in itself, just for [addressing] the typical, cliché high school stereotypes. But this time, it’s bigger than that.”
If you go
Highball Musical
JR’s Bar, 1519 17th St. NW. highballproductionsdc.com.
Dates: Sept. 8, 13 and 14.
Prices: $5-$10.
