Resolutely fabulous

BOY CULTURE REVIEW: ***1/2 out of ****

Sylvester (September 6, 1947—December 16, 1988) was a force of nature—he forced his nature on a world that was at times unwilling to accept him for the person he didn't choose to be, and for the person he chose to be. It's hard to imagine Sylvester's brand of authenticity bringing him success in the 1970s, but he had a good imagination because success is what he had. With some indelible disco classics and a refusal to play the game required of most other popular singers, he became a gay icon and an inspiration in his short life—he died of AIDS at 41.

In Mighty Real: A Fabulous Sylvester Musical, Anthony Wayne (who also wrote the book and is co-director and co-producer with his partner Kendrell Bowman) resurrects Sylvester, doing a damn fine job of disproving any notion that Sylvester was inimitable. In a performance that's informed by Wayne's obvious respect for the icon, he recalls without mimicking Sylvester's piercing falsetto in a string of soaring musical numbers that draw from the entertainer's entire oeuvre.

Weather you like it or not!

With Anastacia McCleskey as Izora Armstead (circa July 6, 1942—September 16, 2004) and Jacqueline B. Arnold as Martha Wash (b. December 28, 1953)—hi, they're your Weather Girls!—and dazzling backup by Deanne Stewart and Rahmel McDade, Mighty Real is a series of musical performances with emotional interludes that allow the late singer to recount his life from happy childhood to beyond-awkward adolescence to wild-child reality testing in San Francisco in the '60s to stardom and, ultimately, to his untimely death.

As a revue, the show is just about flawless—Wayne sings the hell out of and back into disco hits [“Dance (Disco Heat)”] and gospel-tinged ballads (“You are My Friend”) and the ladies bring down the house with their take on “It's Raining Men”. What I liked best about the vocal performances is that while they pay attentive homage to the originals, they're not karaoke, showing there is plenty of room for both tribute and re-invention.

Predictably, “Do You Wanna Funk” and “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)” are scorchers, but lesser-known works, like Sylvester's 1979 medley of “Could It Be Magic/A Song for You”, keep the hands clapping and feet stomping. The crowd at times talked back, as if we were seeing the real-deal Sylvester in an intimate nightclub setting in the '80s, due not only to the performances but to the spectacularly well-used space.

If the book is a little superficial at times—Sylvester's molestation by his choir director is confusingly spotlighted and then dropped, his rift with Izora and Martha isn't properly set up and explored—it's sincere.

After the girls gave some riveting performances, Wayne as Sylvester asked, “What's the sign say?”

I thought the limited costumes were impeccably chosen and well made, but was looking for more than a few changes and was surprised how little headgear and how few wigs and gender-fuck accessories were used.

Performance-wise, the one thing that might give diehard fans pause is how muscular and lean this iteration of Sylvester is, and how svelte his Weather Girls are—their voices are beyond reproach, but the originals were originally called Two Tons o' Fun.

But Mighty Real is a mighty good time, and definitely keeps it real for its very deserving subject.

Mighty Real: A Fabulous Sylvester Musical is playing at the Theatre at St. Clements (423 W. 46th St., NYC) through October 5. Photography by Joan Marcus.