Mighty Real: A Fabulous Sylvester Musical (Theatre at St. Clement’s)

The procession of inside-the-music jukebox tuners continues with Mighty Real, which covers the life of Sylvester, the androgynous disco diva who made his mark on the ’70s music scene with such hits as “Can’t Stop Dancing,” “Do You Wanna Funk,” and “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real).” I once wrote that in the future, every book and film would become a musical. I now extend this to include every catalog of pop music. Whether this one will be of interest to anyone beyond hardcore Sylvester fans is open to question, however. As show business sagas go, Sylvester’s life follows a fairly standard rise-and-fall scenario. Born into poverty in South Central Los Angeles, Sylvester James, Jr. fell in love with music at Sunday Pentecostal services, but at an early age it became obvious that his life was headed in another direction. He reportedly entered into his first sexual relationship, with a member of the congregation, at the age of eight — interestingly, Mighty Real portrays this episode as molestation, although Sylvester always maintained it was consensual — and, by the time he was 14, he was on his own and homeless. He became a member of the Disquotays, a group of Los Angeles-based cross-dressers best known for their elaborate house parties. (Interestingly, they were taken up for a time by Etta James.)