Goodbye, ‘Beach Blanket Babylon’
By: Emily Blaire
Tags: Bay Area, Theater, San Francisco, Music, Culture

Talking to my compatriots in line outside the theater, I learned that Beach Blanket Babylon is the kind of show that’s hard to stay away from once you’ve seen it. I speak with more than 20 people, but only three are first-timers.

Several cite the show’s topical format as the reason why they keep coming back. Over the years, Beach Blanket Babylon has poked fun at everything from the Monica Lewinsky scandal to Kim Kardashian’s internet-breaking Paper Magazine cover to the construction of Salesforce Tower. But others offer personal reasons as to why Beach Blanket Babylon means so much to them.

One woman, who’s come to the show as part of an outing organized by the senior center where she lives, tells me that she appreciates the diversity of the cast, “which is very reflective of the San Francisco Bay Area” — and something that can be hard to find in theater.

Another attendee, Jody, highlights the impact that Beach Blanket Babylon has had on the queer community: “I think [Beach Blanket Babylon] carries some of our stories and our values in it, and it presents it to a larger community than a drag show,” she says.

Jody has come to Club Fugazi with a group of her friends, all of them involved in the queer arts scene. When one of them, Cynthi, hears that I’ve never attended the show, she thrusts a pair of pink tickets in my hand.

“There,” she says. “I have two extra. You have to go see it.”

“Oh my God, thank you,” I stammer, dumbstruck by her kindness.

I enter the theater eager to find out why the show has become such a sensation. What follows is 90 minutes of frenetic theater magic. The main plot involves Snow White on a quest to find her (proverbial) Prince Charming. Admittedly, the story is pretty thin and, at times, illogical. One moment, Snow White inexplicably runs into the Clintons for no apparent reason while in Rome.

But it’s clear early on that you don’t go to Beach Blanket Babylon for the plot. You go for the music, a blend of original compositions and various covers of hits from the past several decades, belted out by some of the most soulful and talented singers you’ve ever heard. You go for the elaborate drag-inspired costumes, makeup, and neon pink wigs; although Schuman Silver will later insist that there’s no drag influence in the show — “it’s too clever to be camp,” she tells me. You go to witness a world in which a Kamala Harris character dances onstage, backed by storm troopers, the Pope, Miley Cyrus, and an overbearing Jewish mother, and it all makes perfect sense. You go for the nonstop jokes, which hit you at a frantic pace and skewer everything from celebrities to pop culture to politicians.

“I see us becoming a very rich society that doesn’t have room or time for something wacky and fun and ridiculous like ‘Beach Blanket.’”

While the show is undoubtedly satirical, it’s largely nonpartisan. A caricature of Nancy Pelosi is just as likely to appear as one of Donald Trump — accompanied, of course, by Sound of Music-esque versions of his children, called the Von Trump family singers.

The Von Trump family. Photo: “Beach Blanket Babylon”

“One of the things that we like to say is, we don’t make fun of; we have fun with these characters that we put onstage,” longtime stage manager John Camajani tells me. “We have fun with everybody. It’s not necessarily pointed.”

I think back to what one man waiting outside the theater told me: his wife’s “aunt from Louisiana, right above the Bible Belt, can come see this and think ‘Ooh, that’s fun!’ It doesn’t upset anyone.”

At the end of the performance, because this is a holiday show, there’s a tacked-on sketch with tap-dancing Christmas trees singing renditions of holiday classics. As the cast takes a bow, the applause is overwhelming. Nearly everyone in the theater rises to their feet.

“It was like the beautiful fever dream of a drag queen who fell asleep watching ‘I Love the 2010s’ on Christmas Eve,” I whisper to the friend who ended up joining me at the last minute.