The day after the debut of his new summer show at the Crown & Anchor last month, Jeffery Roberson — the beating heart of Provincetown drag, better known as Varla Jean Merman — was still riding high.
“They were such a great audience,” said Roberson, noting that there was an especially large female contingent. “It’s a big room, and you’ve got to get the ladies. I didn’t purposely go after them, but I love Chappell Roan — and the ladies like her, too, thank God!”
Titled “The Drowsy Chappell Roan” — a punny mashup of the names of the Broadway musical comedy The Drowsy Chaperone and the pop music princess — the show is another triumph in a line of memorable shows that Roberson has brought to Provincetown over three decades: a combination of live singing, physical comedy, top-notch music (featuring Todd Alsup on piano), subversive lyrics, personal stories, and professional polish that is second to none.
It’s also the most recent expression of a sharp comedic talent that Roberson has been honing since he was a teenager growing up in rural Louisiana.
As is the case with many comedians and drag performers of his generation, Carol Burnett figures heavily as one of his early comic influences. “That was definitely a red flag to my mother that I was gay,” says Roberson, who was raised by Southern Baptists. “I didn’t want to be Tim Conway. I wanted to be Carol Burnett.”
Roberson was able to put some physical and emotional distance between himself and his conservative parents when he was accepted by the Louisiana School for Math, Science, and the Arts — a boarding school on the campus of Northwestern State University in Natchitoches, La. — as a prospective chemistry major.
“I always knew I wanted to be in the arts in some way,” says Roberson. “I just gravitated toward the show choir and the singers. I used to have a very high voice. This woman heard me in the hall and was like, ‘Are you a tenor? I need a tenor.’ I just said yes. I’d never sung before in my life. The next year I was a vocal major, and I got a scholarship to go to Louisiana State University. But I realized at LSU that I didn’t want to be a tenor. I wanted to be funny.”
When he saw drag superstar Coco Peru in a 1992 solo show in New York City, Roberson says, his vision of what drag performance could be was forever altered.
“I couldn’t believe that someone was using drag in that way,” he says of Coco’s creator, Clinton Leupp. “It was unbelievable. He’s been a great influence because his comedy is so smart and has nothing to do with drag. It’s just funny.”
After graduating from college, Roberson moved to New York City and took a day job in advertising, while Varla became a fixture in the nightlife scene. Theatrical impresario Kevin Malony was writing and directing a series of performances called Fractured Classicks: famous plays whittled down to their essence and performed by unconventional actors. Malony immediately recognized Varla’s star potential.
“I got to play Laura in The Glass Menagerie,” says Roberson. “The guy who played Tom looked like Count Dracula.” But by playing the character straight, Roberson was learning that keeping it real in an outrageous circumstance was a way to get big laughs.
Actor and playwright Charles Busch was another major influence. After they worked together in a production of The Miracle Worker in which Busch played teacher Annie Sullivan to Roberson’s blind and mute Helen Keller, Busch cast him in his play The Divine Sister as Mother Superior in a production by Boston’s SpeakEasy Stage Company.
“I had worked with so many other people who were kind of wild,” says Roberson. “Charles was always so calm.”
On July 5, 1995, Varla Jean Merman made her Provincetown debut at town hall as the opening act for another drag queen whose routine followed a more traditional lip-synching template. After a few summers of performing in Provincetown when Roberson could get time off work, Phyllis Schlosberg, the late former owner of the Post Office Café & Cabaret, gave him the nudge that led him to quit his day job. She promised that he’d make more money in Provincetown in a summer than he would working in New York City the rest of the year.
“It’s terrifying to leave a job at a corporation and think, ‘I hope this works out,’ ” says Roberson. “No health insurance and all of that. But it did work out. I’m so lucky that this is my job.”
Despite his 30 years as one of Provincetown’s must-see drag artists, Roberson continues to gather inspiration from his fellow performers. This year, he’s been paying close attention to Dina Martina, his dressing room companion at the Crown & Anchor.
“I put on my makeup every night and I listen to Dina,” says Roberson. “It’s been a master class. When you do a one-person show, you don’t know why one audience is different from another. Is it me? Am I bad tonight? And then I get it — by listening to Dina and hearing how the audience responds to the same material on different nights. It takes a lot of the loneliness away from doing a one-person show, because you see somebody else is having the exact same experience.”
While 2023’s patriotically themed Stand By Your Drag was perhaps his most overtly political show, Roberson is staying away from politics this year.
“Every year is different, and every year the show kind of chooses me,” he says, adding that the 2023 show “was a very special show to me. A lot of people were really moved by the thing about taking the American flag back, because it was starting to become ‘their’ symbol.
“This year, I wanted a diversion,” he continues. “I got rid of every news app I had and started listening to the radio. I just wanted to listen to what was out in the world. I’ve never done a show where every single song is currently on the radio, and I don’t know if I’ve ever done a show where every single thing in the show is brand new. It was a great challenge for me, too — to try to make music that maybe some of my older fans don’t know and still make it funny. It has to have a funny concept, so it doesn’t matter whether or not you know the music.”
In one particularly inspired bit, Varla sings a parody of Sabrina Carpenter’s 2024 summer pop smash “Espresso” — here rewritten as “Potato,” during which her silver gown inflates into a giant foil baked potato jacket in an ensemble designed by Roberson’s longtime costumer, Jim “Electra” Buff.
“I have the most amazing costumer,” says Roberson. “I said I want to blow up like a baked potato, and he was like, ‘What color?’ He figured out how to make an outfit that blew up.”
Even at her silliest, Roberson wants Varla to remind us that laughter is not just an escape but a vital act of defiance.
“I think more than ever that it’s best to stay away from politics and just make people laugh and completely forget everything,” he says. “If you don’t agree with what’s going on right now, there’s not a lot we can do. We have to laugh.”
Good Luck, Babe!
The event: Varla Jean Merman in “The Drowsy Chappell Roan”
The time: Tuesdays-Saturdays at 8:30 p.m. through Sept. 20
The place: Crown & Anchor, 247 Commercial St., Provincetown
The cost: $40-$50 plus fees at onlyatthecrown.com
