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Crown & Anchor

    FA-LA-LA-LA-LA

    A Diva With a Heart of Gold Plays a Scrooge

    Tina Burner brings a one-queen Christmas Carol to the cabaret stage

    By

    “We all know that we all hate the holidays,” says Tina Burner, the drag performer and comedian from New York City who starred in Season 13 of RuPaul’s Drag Race. “The last time I was in church it was called the Limelight,” she says, referring to the now-gone nightclub.

    Tina Burner brings her parody of Dickens’s Christmas classic to Provincetown for two weekends starting Friday, Nov. 29. (Photo courtesy Crown & Anchor)

    Her show, A Bitchmas Carol, puts a drag spin on Charles Dickens’s tale of a Christmas-loathing curmudgeon visited by a quartet of ghosts who teach him the true meaning of the holiday. In this version, Burner plays Ebenezer Scrooge.

    Burner was tearing through Europe — on her way to Provincetown, where she’ll be performing during Holly Folly — when she talked with the Indie from Amsterdam last week. She was recovering from a night on the town with some drag queens from New York City.

    As for her upcoming seasonal sourpuss role, “I’m going to take it and put it through some twists and turns from the perspective of a gay man and a drag queen,” she said. “Originally, I thought I would do a character like Eliza Scrooge or something, but I thought to myself, I’m already a hateful person, so I might as well just really lean into that.”

    It’s a challenge not to roll your eyes at Burner calling herself hateful. If you’ve ever caught one of her performances, you know this self-proclaimed “hooker” has a big heart of gold.

    Other characters in Scrooge’s story are also reimagined for the show. Scrooge’s business partner, Marley, will be recast as a recently deceased RuPaul. One can imagine Vanessa “Miss Vanjie” Mateo as Tiny Tim and Raja appearing as the ghost of Christmas Past. Burner, who will be playing all of the roles in this one-kween extravaganza, is sitting on those secrets. But she will say that her version of Tina Burner as Scrooge will play out scenes pulled from her own life.

    While there have been some serious one-actor versions of A Christmas Carol — think Sir Patrick Stewart’s legendary no costumes, no props 1986 creation, or Broadway veteran Jefferson Mays’s 2018 tour de force first performed at the Geffen Theater in Los Angeles, in which Mays played more than 50 characters, including a potato — Burner is turning her version into a semi-autobiographical parody including costume changes and featuring both covers and original music.

    “I like the risk of taking all of the responsibility for the success of my show,” said Burner. “I write it, direct it, there’s help with the music and costumes, but, essentially, it’s all up to me to make it work. I find that incredibly exciting.”

    For Burner, this anti-Christmas holiday show is a return to more freewheeling days on stage before the fame from being on RuPaul’s Drag Race changed the way audiences saw her.

    When she was cast on the show in 2020, she was performing on Instagram Live from her living room. “After you do Drag Race, you get very cautious about what you do and say, because now there’s this big spotlight on you,” Burner said. “I started holding back because I worried about what people would say. Now I’m in my zero cares era. In Bitchmas Carol, I’m trying to get back to who I was before Drag Race, the classic Tina Burner.”

    Burner described an idyllic childhood in upstate New York that included zipping around a forest on a snowmobile to find the perfect Christmas tree. So, when did the anti-Christmas sentiment take hold?

    “Obviously, deep inside, Christmas is very special to me,” she said. “But Christmas and the holidays are very commercial, and that’s just not what it means to me.” It’s that, and not the holiday itself, that she’s taking on in this performance. “And in the end, you’ll find out that I really haven’t hated Christmas all along,” she added.

    Burner has been performing in Provincetown for only three years. What began as a short run at the Pilgrim House led to a full summer on the stage at the Crown & Anchor. Although Fire Island is closer to home, she found it didn’t have the invigorating energy of Provincetown.

    Being on a small stage surrounded by the audience on three sides without a backstage area and with only limited technical support would be a challenge for some classically trained musical theater performers. But Burner has turned the Wave Bar into an intimate cabaret. One of the most impressive things about a Tina Burner show is her commitment to costume changes. Even when they’re done in a tiny space behind the light booth, she said, “I like to pull out all the stops.”

    Before Burner headed to Europe, she was knocking on doors with Queers for Kamala. “I think of the people who fought for me to have my rights, so it’s time for me to fight for future generations to have their rights,” she said. During her travels across the pond, she’s seen a stunned reaction to America’s decisive swing to the political right: “People seem to be having trouble accepting that it really happened.”

    Does she expect that the shift will fan the flames of anti-drag legislation? Burner is unsure but is ready to rumble if it does.

    “I’m not going to sit there and take it quietly,” she said. “I don’t think any of us will. There’s one thing we know about our community. We’re resilient and very loud.”

    Dickens in Drag

    The event: Tina Burner’s ‘A Bitchmas Carol’
    The time: Nov. 29 and 30, Dec. 5, 6, and 7 at 7 p.m.
    The place: Crown & Anchor, 247 Commercial St., Provincetown
    The cost: $35 general admission, $45 VIP, at onlyatthecrown.com

    DRAG DESK

    Delta Miles Celebrates Judy Garland at Her Best

    An homage to the star’s ability to make people feel good

    By

    Blue lights cover the stage of the cabaret room at the Crown & Anchor. A voice seeps through the narrow opening in the curtain: “Another openin’, another show,” sings Delta Miles in her best Judy Garland impersonation.

    Delta Miles is Judy Garland in a show at Provincetown’s Crown & Anchor. (Photo courtesy Delta Miles)

    The curtains part. Miles poses in silhouette with her microphone skyward. She sings; the lights change from blue to gold. She twirls the microphone cord around her shoulder. She’s in a short-haired wig and a crimson-and-silver striped shirt with cuffed sleeves and a white collar.

    She toasts the audience with a faux cocktail — Miles is sober, but Judy certainly was not. She does an amazing job at faking drunkenness, her voice a little swerved. She sings and pauses. The pauses are masterful, pregnant with meaning.

    She relaxes into the performance and handles accidents and missteps seamlessly. Despite what happens during any given performance of “Delta Miles Is Judy Live,” on the stage every Wednesday through Sept. 18, Miles stays sharp.

    Miles weaves together songs, stand-up, and tipsy storytelling. During one anecdote, a few buttons on her shirt pop out mid-sentence. She pauses to rebutton. She’s both doing it for herself and pointing it out to her audience. Here, mistakes and mishaps are a shared experience.

    Miles has got her numbers down. Like a gourmet chef, she plates each lyric perfectly in front of her audience and bows at the end.

    In “Come Rain or Come Shine,” Miles steps offstage before the music ends, abandoning her audience early. We’re left with an eerie moment — this Judy, like the real one, who died from a drug overdose in 1969 at age 47, is gone before her time.

    “I know I’m not 75 pounds, but I want to celebrate this woman,” says John Pirroni, the man behind Miles, sitting at a picnic table in the courtyard of the Moffat House, where Crown & Anchor staff live. He has cobalt blue nails and Army green Birkenstock sandals on. Around his neck is a chain from Full Kit that matches his gold earrings.

    “I do squats before shows backstage, like 25, to warm up my body,” he says. “The makeup process is two and a half hours, so I listen to Judy Garland and Marilyn Monroe. I allow myself to sit and enjoy. I’ll start slowly talking like Judy.”

    Pirroni performed for the first time in drag in 2010 at Machine, a now shuttered gay club in Boston. “When I was a kid, I said I was going to be a drag queen and work with Varla Jean Merman,” he recalls.

    There were certain drag queens Pirroni watched online when YouTube was created: Varla Jean, Randy Robert, Coco Peru, and Edie. “It was like looking at sugar cereal in the supermarket,” he says. “It was all I wanted. My eyes would glaze watching these performers.”

    Pirroni moved to Provincetown to perform in 2021. “I wanted to throw my head in some wigs and run around town like a banshee,” he says.

    Pirroni was born in Cambridge in 1986. He grew up in Somerville and went to Middlesex Community College but dropped out once performing took over. “Theater was always an extracurricular activity, something you did as a hobby,” he says. “Growing up, I thought you had to get a job and work in an office. I never focused on theater as a career choice. I always did it on the side, but it somehow turned into my career.”

    Pirroni learned performance from friends and by simply going out there and doing it. “I’m so Italian in that regard,” he says. “I’m a tradesman: I learn by doing. I paint shoes, I make wigs, I make costumes, I use my body. The best training for me has been on the ground.”

    Delta Miles is an alter ego. “She’s not as much a character as an embodiment of all the things I struggle with,” Pirroni says. “She breaks limiting beliefs I have about myself. All the things I think I’m not capable of, Delta is capable of.

    “I, as John Pirroni, would say I’m too tall and weigh far too much and have too low a voice to do a Judy Garland impersonation,” he continues. “Judy Garland was four-foot-11 and weighed maybe 90 pounds soaking wet. Delta doesn’t care about any of that. Delta believes she can celebrate this human being and not feel ashamed or embarrassed by it.”

    During every show, Pirroni plays a clip from a Judy Garland interview: “I really like my audiences,” says Garland. “I have great respect for them. I think anyone who would sit in a chair and look at one person and pay money to see that — that’s a marriage between the audience and myself.”

    “So much of Judy Garland is put out there in the world, but it isn’t always about her ability to perform,” Pirroni says. He notes that, even today, the media tend to emphasize Garland’s dark side — her drug use, her alcoholism, her sloppiness — and her talent lives under this shadow. “But in my show, I want to celebrate how great she made people feel,” he says.
    “We all focus on the way people behave when they’re embarrassing instead of the way people make others feel when they’re at their best,” he says. “Judy Garland makes me feel captivated when I listen to or watch her.”

    Marrying the Audience

    The event: ‘Delta Miles Is Judy Live’
    The time: Wednesdays through Sept. 18 at 9 p.m.
    The place: Crown & Anchor, 247 Commercial St., Provincetown
    The cost: $35 and $45 at onlyatthecrown.com

    REAL ESTATE

    Pace of Sales Picks Up in Provincetown’s Business Sector

    Brass Key, Crowne Pointe, and Land’s End Inn are all changing hands

    By

    PROVINCETOWN — The sales of three important hotel and restaurant properties have been announced in recent days, with at least one more pending, as the frenzied real estate market on the Outer Cape shows few signs of cooling off.

    The biggest deal in the group is the sale of the Brass Key and Crowne Pointe hotels to the Linchris Hotel Corp. of Plymouth in 13 separate transactions on Nov. 18 for a total of just over $25 million.

    One of the nine buildings that make up the Brass Key Guesthouse at 67 Bradford St. The entrance to the Shipwreck Bar is at left. (Photo Paul Benson)

    Four residential properties, separate from the two hotels, were included in the sale, with 25 bedrooms among them, according to town records. Those four additional properties accounted for $2.9 million of the $25 million combined transaction. Another building at 79 Shank Painter Road, which formerly housed the Provincetown Pet Resort downstairs and has some housing upstairs, was also part of that sale, representing $1.6 million of the $25 million total.

    Also announced in the past week was the impending sale of the Land’s End Inn at 22 Commercial St. to Edmond Macri and Trevor Mikula, Provincetown residents who are building a house nearby on Point Street. And, as previously reported in the Independent, the Crown & Anchor is under contract to Provincetown residents Jonathan Hawkins and Paolo Martini, in an imminent transfer of ownership that became public at a licensing board meeting in October.

    The fourth large property includes the Governor Bradford restaurant and five adjacent downtown buildings, which are being offered together for $7.5 million and are listed online as under contract. That group of properties includes 19 residential units with a total of 30 bedrooms, according to the town assessor’s reports, as well as seven retail spaces in addition to the restaurant. The centerpiece parcel at 312 Commercial St., which includes the restaurant, an underground bar, and five bedrooms, has not changed hands since Donald Edwards purchased it in 1958.

    Hometown Buyers

    The historical norm in Provincetown has been that people who own businesses here also live here, at least for most of the year. That pattern appears to have held in the sale of the Crown & Anchor from Rick Murray and Bill Dougal to Hawkins and Martini, and it is also holding in the sale of the Land’s End Inn from Stan and Eva Sikorski, who live in the East End, to Macri and Mikula, who live in the West End.

    The Sikorskis said they were excited to find local buyers who would maintain the distinctive 18-room hotel as a business.

    “We are thrilled that we were able to find Ed and Trevor, who understand the value of the Provincetown arts community,” said Eva Sikorski. “They will continue and enhance the inn’s contribution to the art scene that makes Provincetown such a unique and special place.”

    Mikula is a painter who previously had his own gallery here and now is represented by the William Scott Gallery. Macri had a 14-year career at the online retailer Wayfair.com, serving as vice president and chief product and marketing officer before retiring last year. (Macri is also a shareholder in the Independent.) Mikula and Macri are married, and they met the Sikorskis while conducting a large-scale renovation on an adjacent residential parcel where they will live.

    Left to right, future hotel manager Peter Sullivan, future owners Ed Macri and Trevor Mikula, and current owners Eva and Stan Sikorski in front of the Land’s End Inn. (Photo courtesy Ed Macri)

    “As we got to know Stan and Eva and spent more time at the inn, we developed a deep appreciation for the inn’s role in the community,” said Macri. “We are honored to have the opportunity to protect, preserve, and evolve this incredible landmark. Our intent is to do so in a way that ensures it is enjoyed by the town and those who love it for generations to come.”

    Neither the Crown & Anchor nor the Land’s End Inn was publicly listed for sale. According to Rob Tosner, former owner of the White Winds Inn who has been a listing agent for several guest houses, privately negotiated sales aren’t that unusual.

    “It’s always the seller’s decision” whom to sell to, said Tosner. In contrast to residential property owners, business owners usually have fewer buyers to pick from. “It’s always been rare to get multiple offers on a commercial listing,” Tosner added. “We were really thrilled that we got to sell the White Winds as a guest house.”

    Corporate Buyers

    In the last several years, some of Provincetown’s largest hotels were bought by out-of-town corporations. In 2000, the Linchris Hotel Corp. bought the Surfside Hotel, which is licensed for 88 rooms; in 2018, Linchris bought the Harbor Hotel, which is licensed for 139 rooms.

    Linchris currently owns 29 properties in 14 states with a total of 4,578 guest rooms, according to a company press release announcing the purchase of the Brass Key and Crowne Pointe.

    With that sale accomplished, there are now at least four medium-size hotels in Provincetown that are not locally owned.

    AWOL, with 32 rooms, was bought by the Lark Hotel Group in 2017. The Breakwater Hotel, with 26 rooms, was bought by the Lexvest Group in 2018.

    Crowne Pointe has 37 rooms, a restaurant, and a spa spread across six adjacent buildings. Linchris paid $10 million for the four parcels that make up the property.

    The Brass Key has 43 rooms and an indoor-outdoor bar, the Shipwreck, spread across nine buildings. The three parcels that make up the property were bought for $10.7 million.

    These are still relatively large properties by Provincetown standards. The average guest house here has 8 to 14 rooms. Nonetheless, recent sales seem to suggest that the smallest hotels are the most vulnerable to conversion into single-family homes (see “As Guest Houses Sell, Many Become Private Homes, Nov. 11, page A5), while the largest ones are more appealing to corporate buyers.

    In spite of these two market trends, the traditional, locally owned Provincetown hotel manages to survive.

    ECONOMY

    Crown & Anchor, a Gay Landmark, Is Under Contract

    Entertainment complex to be sold to Hawkins and Martini

    By

    PROVINCETOWN — The current owners of the Crown & Anchor complex, Bill Dougal and Rick Murray, are in the final stages of selling the property to their longtime employee Jonathan Hawkins and his boyfriend and business partner, Paolo Martini. The innkeeper, entertainment, and liquor licenses were all transferred from Dougal and Murray to Martini and Hawkins at a licensing board meeting on Oct. 12.

    Both the current and incoming owners declined to comment on the details of the transaction at this time.

    The Crown & Anchor complex, at 247 Commercial St., is a cornerstone of gay life in Provincetown. Its three stages host numerous drag shows, Broadway singers, stand-up comics, and variety acts, and its six bars are a key locus for many of Provincetown’s gay events, including Women’s Week and Bear Week.

    Producer Jonathan Hawkins, at left, and his partner scientist Paolo Martini are set to take ownership of the Crown & Anchor. (Photo courtesy Jonathan Hawkins)

    “The Crown & Anchor is a historic and iconic institution of Provincetown,” said Bob Sanborn, director of the Provincetown Business Guild, to the licensing board. “It is critical to the local economy.”

    Under Dougal and Murray, the property was both locally- and gay-owned, and if the transaction is completed as planned, that will remain true. Corporate consolidation has been a fearsome force in many industries across the country, from hospitality to health care to residential real estate to news media. Maintaining local ownership of a key business would mean Provincetown will have again bucked a trend.

    Hawkins’s background is in the performing arts. A trained vocalist, he runs a production company, Live From Provincetown, and has worked at the Crown & Anchor for seven years, helping to book shows of all kinds.

    “I have had the privilege of working under Rick Murray since 2014,” Hawkins told the licensing board on Tuesday. “I came here as an entertainer, then began helping him produce his concert series. Last summer, Live From Provincetown worked with the Pilgrim House, the Boatslip, the Provincetown Brewing Co., and the Brass Key, all to help keep art and entertainment alive during the Covid pandemic.”

    The virtual concerts held in the spring and summer of 2020 helped raise money for artists who could not perform during the Covid lockdowns and venue closures of that year.

    “For the last two years, Rick and I have worked together to make this transition as seamless as possible,” said Hawkins. “The Crown will be run as a business — but my commitment will be to the community, its artists, and all those who enjoy coming here year after year.”

    Hawkins’s business partner, Martini, is chief scientific officer for rare diseases at Moderna, the maker of mRNA Covid vaccines in Boston. “I’m sorry, but I’m the boring one,” he joked to the licensing board.

    Martini said he could not discuss the upcoming purchase of the Crown, but he did speak to the Independent about his life and career.

    “Moderna has five chief scientific officers,” said Martini. “I run the team for rare diseases. We announced two weeks ago a partnership with the University of Pennsylvania to make a drug for Crigler-Najjar disease — it’s an ultra-rare disease, probably not more than 2,000 patients worldwide.”

    Moderna also has teams for autoimmune disease, for cancer, and for infectious disease, said Martini. Both the Covid vaccine and a new vaccine against HIV, which is now entering human trials, are part of the infectious disease division of Moderna.

    The fifth chief scientific officer studies mRNA platforms and delivery systems. She and her wife are also moving to Provincetown, said Martini.

    Remote Science

    Martini bought an apartment here in 2020, he said, then bought a house with Hawkins when he realized he was staying here full-time.

    “It hasn’t been difficult at all to do my work from here,” said Martini. Once a week he wakes up early, drives to Boston, and comes back by evening. The rest of his work he can do remotely.

    “When I get in the car, knowing that I’m coming all the way back here, I’m happy,” he said. “I haven’t had to stay overnight in Boston for a whole year.”

    Two other Moderna executives have second homes here, he said, and he knows scientists from GlaxoSmithKline, Biogen, and Takeda who have moved here during the pandemic as well.

    “Counting me, it was four gay scientists, just at that apartment complex,” said Martini. “To live in a place that lets you be who you want to be — these are people who are going to come and stay.”

    Remote work like the kind Martini describes could be a game-changer for Cape Cod. He also wants to work on maintaining pathways for queer artists to come here.

    “I want to put together a foundation that can give artists an opportunity to create here,” said Martini. “Give them a full experience, and the opportunity to exhibit and sell in this town. And then, if they decide this is the place they want to be, make it sustainable for them.

    “The number of young people who can afford to be here is very limited,” said Martini. “I want to discuss, eventually, what can we do with the town to create these spaces that would allow young people to stay.”

    our picks for the week of Sept 2 through August 8

    Indie’s Choice

    By

    Watch Like a Hawk (Thursday, Sept. 2)

    Truro Connections — a collaboration between Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill, the Truro Historical Society, the Truro Meeting House, and Payomet Performing Arts Center — hosts the Red Hawk Singers and Dancers, an indigenous performance group, on Thursday, Sept. 2, 5 p.m. The event will take place at Edgewood Farm, 3 Edgewood Way in Truro. Registration is free at castlehill.org.

    Snakes in the Grass (Thursday, Sept. 2)

    Wellfleet Preservation Hall, 335 Main St., continues its backyard concert series with the Revolutionary Snake Ensemble on Thursday, Sept. 2, 5 p.m. Founded by Ken Field, the funk-inflected brass band plays New Orleans-inspired tunes. Bring a lawn chair or blanket. Tickets are $25 at wellfleetpreservationhall.org.

    Apple of My Eye (Thursday, Sept 2-Friday, Sept. 3)

    Rebecca Bruyn teaches “Introduction to iPhoneography,” a two-day workshop at Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill, 10 Meetinghouse Road, on Thursday, Sept. 2 and Friday, Sept. 3, from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Bruyn will teach students how to make arresting images with their devices with an emphasis on post-production. Registration is $250 at castlehill.org.

    Under the Hammer (Friday, Sept. 3)

    The Provincetown Art Association and Museum’s 34th annual consignment auction will be on view at 460 Commercial St. starting Friday, Sept. 3. Consigners will receive 80 percent of the “hammer price,” with PAAM receiving the other 20 percent. The auction, officiated by Jim Bakker, will be held online at liveauctioneers.com, closing at 7 p.m. on Sept. 25.

    Rhiannon Giddens performs at Payomet on Friday. (Photo courtesy Rhiannon Giddens)

    Banjo on Her Knee (Friday, Sept. 3)

    Rhiannon Giddens, co-founder of the Carolina Chocolate Drops and recently appointed artistic director of Silkroad, performs at the Payomet Performing Arts Center, 29 Old Dewline Road in Truro, on Friday, Sept. 3, 7 p.m. Giddens — a singer, fiddler, and banjo player — recently released the album They’re Calling Me Home with percussionist Francesco Turrisi. Tickets are $75 at payomet.org.

    Kindred Spirits (Saturday, Sept. 4)

    Heather Greene, CEO of Milam and Greene Whiskies and author of Whiskey Distilled: A Populist Guide to the Water of Life, will host a live and virtual book event at East End Books Ptown, 389 Commercial St., on Saturday, Sept. 4, 5:30 p.m. The event, which includes a tasting, is $5 suggested donation at eastendbooksptown.com.

    Voices Carry (Sunday, Sept. 5)

    Hyannis Sound performs online this week as part of Great Music on Sundays @5. The award-winning collegiate a capella group of male voices from across the U.S. will present music arranged by former and current members. Watch free via YouTube on Sunday, Sept. 5, 5 p.m. Visit ptownmusic.com to donate.

    Broadway Beckons (Sunday, Sept. 5)

    The Art House presents Tony Award-winning actress and singer Beth Leavel performing one night only at Provincetown Town Hall, 260 Commercial St., on Sunday, Sept. 5, 6:30 p.m. Accompanied by Seth Rudetsky on piano, the event is a fundraiser for Sandy Hook Promise. Tickets range from $50 to $150 at provincetownarthouse.com.

                                                                                   

    Branden and James perform at Pilgrim House this week. (Photo courtesy Branden and James)

    Cover Artists (Sunday, Sept. 5 – Wednesday, Sept. 9)

    Cello and tenor duo Branden and James return to Pilgrim House, 336 Commercial St. in Provincetown, from Sunday, Sept. 5 through Thursday, Sept. 9, 7:30 p.m. Their show, “Broadway Under the Covers,” celebrates music from Hamilton, Wicked, Dear Evan Hansen, Mary Poppins, and West Side Story. Masks and proof of vaccination required. Tickets are $35 at pilgrimhouseptown.com.

     

     

    Piano Men (Monday, Sept. 6)

    Jon Richardson and Todd Alsup will tickle the ivories and belt out pop hits by Elton John and Billy Joel in “Elton & Billy: Greatest Hits Live” at the Crown & Anchor, 247 Commercial St. in Provincetown, on Monday, Sept. 6, 9 p.m. Tickets are $39 at onlythecrown.com.

    Fresh Air (Tuesday, Sept. 7)

    The Eastham Painters Guild will gather at Coast Guard Beach in Eastham for its second-to-last free outdoor event of the summer, “Plein Air Painting in the Cape Cod National Seashore,” on Tuesday, Sept. 7, 8:30 to 10:30 a.m. More information at easthampaintersguild.com.

    Manchester By the Sea (Wednesday, Sept. 8 – Friday, Sept. 10)

    The Post Office Café and Cabaret, 303 Commercial St. in Provincetown, presents “Melissa Manchester: An Intimate Night” from Wednesday, Sept. 8 through Friday, Sept. 10, 7 p.m. The Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter released her first album, Home to Myself, in 1971 and has released 20 since, including this year’s RE:VIEW. Tickets are $50 at postofficecafe.net.

    Smooth as Suede (Wed.-Thurs.)

    By

    Suede will perform for two nights at the Crown & Anchor, 247 Commercial St. in Provincetown, on Wednesday, Aug. 25 and Thursday, Aug. 26 at 6 p.m. Billed as “Adele meets Diana Krall meets Bette Midler,” Suede will showcase her jazz and pop chops with Fred Boyle on piano, Rich Hill on bass, and Steve Langone on drums. Tickets are $49 at onlyatthecrown.com.

    Boy Oh Boy (Wed.)

    By

    The Boy Band Project performs at the Crown & Anchor, 247 Commercial St. in Provincetown, for two nights, Wednesday, Aug. 18 and Thursday, Aug. 19 at 6 p.m. The group is inspired by the sounds of NSYNC, the Backstreet Boys, One Direction, 98 Degrees, O-Town, Boyz II Men, and the Jonas Brothers. Tickets are $39 at onlyatthecrown.com.

    Vive l’Amour (Wed.)

    By

    Acclaimed singer and actress Melissa Errico presents “Amour & After” poolside at the Crown & Anchor, 247 Commercial St. in Provincetown, for two nights, Wednesday, Aug. 4 and Thursday, Aug. 5, 6 p.m. Errico will perform classics by Michel Legrand such as “Watch What Happens” and “The Windmills of Your Mind,” as well as songs by Charles Trenet, Cole Porter, and Stephen Sondheim. Tickets are $44 at onlyatthecrown.com.

    Steele the Show

    By

    Performing one night only, poolside at the Crown & Anchor, 247 Commercial St. in Provincetown, Anne Steele brings you “The Remix” on Thursday, July 22nd, at 6 p.m. Steele will feature pop, jazz, and cabaret standards from the 1970s to today, reimagined “in ways you never expected.” Tickets are $39 at onlyatthecrown.com.

    DRAG REVIEW

    Dina Martina’s Chaotic Spectacle

    ‘Chariots of Failure’ is a roaring, unzipped success

    By

    “It’s not really a drag show — it’s more like a train wreck,” says one audience member to another minutes before Dina Martina takes the stage at the Crown & Anchor.

    Martina comes out wearing a neck brace. (What happened? She slipped in cat puke.) She is still brushing her hair, all the while panting and gyrating, lipstick smeared all over the lower half of her face. The projector isn’t properly set up, so the default “Vivitek” logo is bouncing around the screen, and the back of Dina’s dress is fully unzipped. All the while, she isn’t singing so much as fluctuating between shrieks and bellows.

    The whole mess is completely, absolutely perfect.

    Dina Martina performs Wednesdays through Sundays, all summer long, at the Crown & Anchor. (Photo courtesy Dina Martina)

    Martina’s show, “Chariots of Failure,” runs Wednesdays through Sundays at 7:30 p.m., poolside at the Crown, throughout the summer. A self-described “horrible singer” and “terrible dancer” (both true), Martina has performed her oddball act since 1989, when she first unleashed it on Seattle. In the three decades since, she has gained an army, or perhaps a cult, of followers (John Waters, Whoopi Goldberg, and Bette Midler among them) for her nonsensical, visceral, manic performances.

    How to describe a drag show that defies description? Maybe like this: watching “Chariots of Failure” feels like fireworks are going off directly in your face. Instead of taking in the spectacle — colors, sparkles, illumination — you’re deafened by the noise, burning hot, and drowning in soot that remains once the beauty has faded. But Martina prompts you to enjoy all of this. Can’t awful, ugly things be their own source of entertainment?

    Which is to say, Martina’s act might surprise you: She’s not one for the glitz and glam, for stilettos (two minutes into the show, she exchanges them for flats, breathing a sigh of relief), or for intricate lighting design and dozens of costume changes. She is, instead, flailing onstage — slowly losing her mind and warping yours.

    Like that of her colleague Varla Jean Merman, Martina’s latest show focuses heavily on the pandemic that we may or may not have put behind us. She says that, as Covid raged on, she “hoped for the best, prayed for the worst” and ate her weight in Flintstones gummy vitamins. She also tells us about the “pharma to table” vaccine she received a few months ago.

    Over the past year and a half, Martina had over 100 shows canceled while performing fewer than a dozen, many of them over Zoom. She describes those performances as “emotionally distanced.” During the show, a chorus of coughs echoes through the audience. (Provincetown is currently seeing a spike in Covid cases.) Martina shrugs and says she will “probably be back performing tomorrow — or maybe not.” The audience lets out an uncomfortable laugh.

    Martina’s humor is not about the punchline — it’s about the stumbles and fumbles that lead up to it. She prioritizes cadence over content, twisting her voice in unexpected ways, mispronouncing more words than she gets right. “Provincetown” becomes the Frenchified “Provence-town,” “Los Angeles” becomes “Lozenge.” It’s child’s humor, but the audience eats it up, tapping into that base part of themselves, letting their guard down. Because isn’t that why so many flock to Provincetown, which Martina refers to affectionately as a “delightful little ashtray of a town?”

    Perhaps the most moving part of Martina’s show is her cover of the Weather Girls’ “It’s Raining Men,” which she changes to “It’s Raining Them,” referring to the increasing number of people who are shedding the binary gender paradigm like snakeskin, proudly telling their friends and family to address them with different pronouns.

    “It’s one of the most beautiful things that’s happened in my lifetime,” says Martina, with no silly intonations or mispronunciations. “Young people are sucking in every iota of joy they can before this planet sinks like the Titanic. I think it’s one of the most beautiful things. I really do.”

    String Thing

    By

    Join Edmund Bagnell, first violinist for the singing string quartet Well-Strung, for “Happy Days Are Here Again,” a show at the Crown & Anchor, 247 Commercial St. in Provincetown. It runs Tuesdays at 6 p.m. through August 31st. Tickets are $39 at onlyatthecrown.com.

     

    Hello, Dolly

    By

    Join Peter Donnelly and Jon Richardson, along with special guest Jonathan Hawkins, for “Dolly!,” a tribute to all things Dolly Parton. This summer-long show will take place poolside at the Crown & Anchor, 247 Commercial St. in Provincetown, on Fridays beginning June 18, 6 p.m. Tickets are $39 at onlyatthecrown.com.

    COURT REPORT

    Two Women Charged With Assaulting Crown & Anchor Manager

    Their alleged slurs also trigger civil rights charges

    By

    PROVINCETOWN — Admittance at the Crown & Anchor’s May 30 evening show was by ticket or by reservation only, North Truro’s Keith Davis, an assistant manager who was working the door that night, had tried to explain. But when a group of ticket-holding white women got into the Crown just before 7 p.m. that Sunday, the reaction of another group — all Black women — led to an altercation that left Davis “shaken,” every active unit of the Provincetown Police Dept. mobilized, and two women facing felony assault and civil rights charges in Orleans District Court.

    The Provincetown police dispatcher sent the entire patrol force to the Crown & Anchor on Commercial Street at 7:05 Sunday to handle a fight in progress, wrote Patrol Officer Shannon Beloin in her report. She arrived on the scene to find “at least five to six female parties walking angrily (as they were screaming and clenching their fists)” towards her cruiser. Unanimously noncompliant with Beloin’s orders, the women meandered until a tag-team of officers stopped them outside Commercial Street’s Waydowntown restaurant.

    Meanwhile, Rick Murray, the Crown & Anchor’s owner, took Beloin to Davis, 60, the victim of the assault.

    Letting the white women in, Davis said, had “provoked” the Black women, who had been trying to talk their way inside. Davis, who is gay and Black, said the women began to scream at him, saying that he was “a racist for not allowing them inside.”

    One woman, later identified as Genea Mitchell, 29, of Oakland, Calif., shoved him. Another, Bryn Vanalstyne, 37, also of Oakland, dug her fingernail into his thumb. Davis said he’d call the police, and Vanalstyne “ripped his phone out of his hands,” Davis told the police, and then stomped on it. The rest of the women began to box Davis in, he said. And Mitchell and Vanalstyne called him a couplet of racist and homophobic slurs.

    Four eyewitnesses confirmed Davis’s account to the police. Two had videotaped the encounter; they gave the footage to Police Sgt. Glenn Enos, who submitted it as supporting evidence.

    Davis agreed to participate in a “show-up” to identify his assailants. He said Mitchell was the woman who’d pushed him, and Vanalstyne was the one who’d thrown his phone to the ground. Asked by Beloin how certain he was, Davis said he was “absolutely positive.”

    Police handcuffed and booked both women. Judge Robert Welsh III arraigned them separately on June 1. Mitchell is charged with a civil rights violation and assault and battery on someone over 60 or disabled, a felony. Vanalstyne is charged with intimidating a witness, juror, police, or court official; a civil rights violation; and assault and battery on someone over 60 or disabled. Both women posted $500 cash bail to be released with the potential of bail revocation. They’ll next appear in court on July 20 for pretrial hearings.

    Correction: Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article identified Keith Davis as the Crown & Anchor’s “bouncer.” He is an assistant manager at the club.

    Your Chariot Awaits

    By

    Drag legend Dina Martina performs “Chariots of Failure,” a new show combining “ludicrous song stylings, unfortunate dance, overburdened costumes” and, of course, comedy, all summer long at the Crown & Anchor. The first show is Thursday, June 3th, 7:30 p.m., poolside at 247 Commercial St. in Provincetown. Tickets are $44 at onlyatthecrown.com.

    PERFORMANCE

    Thirsty Burlington Prepares for a Post-Covid World

    Scott Townsend rehearses a new act for Thirsty — and Cher

    By

    “It sounds like I’m singing in the bathroom and you’re singing way over in the kitchen,” says Scott Townsend — better known as the drag queen and Cher impersonator Thirsty Burlington — to Mark Meehan. Meehan, a local musician, will be backing up Thirsty with vocals and piano for “One Night Only With Cher,” opening at the Crown & Anchor poolside on Memorial Day weekend and running through the summer.

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