A Night at the Tombs
Opening Night: July 8, 2010
Closing: August 5, 2010
Theater: Bowery Poetry Club
In the piece, transgender actress Bianca Leigh’s recounts the events surrounding her arrest for prostitution. While cooling her 6-inch heels in the clink awaiting sentencing, Bianca looks back at her past and tries to make sense of how a skinny New Jersey boy who dreamed of becoming a great Shakespearean actor ended up as a high-priced dominatrix. In a tour-de-force performance that is both hilarious and moving, Bianca brings to vivid life more than a dozen characters, from her disapproving mother to the sadistic corrections officer who enacts the ultimate humiliation. With original music by prominent queer composers and lyricists representing every musical genre from Broadway to opera to punk, this night promises to be one to remember.
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July 16, 2010
Things got hairy for Bianca Leigh when she tried to get less hairy. Born male, Leigh felt she was really female. Since working at Macy’s couldn’t cover her hormone treatment, in the 1980s she moonlighted as a dominatrix — until she was busted for soliciting and sent to New York’s detention house.
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July 8, 2010
In her solo show "A Night at the Tombs," the beguiling Bianca Leigh tells us what it was like to be young, gifted, and transgendered in 1980s Manhattan. If the story, surprisingly, is not quite as fresh as anticipated, it’s clearly honest and consistently engaging. And because Leigh is equally talented as a writer and an actor, her 75-minute soufflé rises with appealing panache.
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July 16, 2010
Transgendered performer Bianca Leigh has a wry wit and charming demeanor that enlivens her solo show A Night at the Tombs, performing Thursday nights at the Bowery Poetry Club. Directed and developed by Tim Cusack for Theatre Askew, this monologue with music features original songs by artists such as Taylor Mac, Jeff Whitty, and Ellen Maddow. Unfortunately, the majority of the tunes do not make much of an impression and Leigh’s vocal talents are not always up to the challenges of her material.
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July 15, 2010
“A Night at the Tombs,” a solo show by the transgender performer Bianca Leigh about the time she spent a night in the Manhattan Detention Complex, sounds as if it ought to be spunky or scandalous. But — not uncommon in transgender theater — it turns out to be largely tease, because nothing much happened during that night of incarceration.
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