Dina Martina says she was born nine months early. “I looked like a poached egg,” she confides. Her grandmother looks just like Colonel Sanders. “Beautiful, hirsute lady,” says Martina. “She was an unsuccessful wet nurse.” Her late mother was a cocktail waitress who, above all else, loved meat. When she died, Arby’s dimmed their lights.
As for Martina, she’s been an entertainer her whole life, if not longer. Despite everything, her daughter loves her. Martina says she’s wearing her daughter’s “goiter” as a bracelet: it’s beautiful, right? She’s pious, a polytheist — her favorite is the Greek god “Dialysis.” He regularly appears in her dreams.
Speaking of sleep, before bed, Martina drinks a tall glass of warm tequila. It really helps: she sleeps like a baby who just drank tequila. Her favorite drink, though, is a whiskey and Coke. To make one: Fill a glass with ice, pour some whiskey, some more, yes, even more, just another splash or two or three. Oh, you’ve already poured this much, why not top it off? Don’t forget the cola — grab your pipette, the one you keep handy on your bar cart, and squirt a few droplets into the glass. There you have it, a whiskey and Coke. Delicious, no?
Martina loves to perform. The pleasure is hers, and you can’t have it. She could have done it without you, but she wouldn’t have wanted to. “I could not have asked for a better life,” she says. She’s witchy and twitchy and manic, but she’s alive. Dina Martina, it’s clear to everyone in the audience of her drag show, “The Comparable Miss Dina Martina,” is in a very good place right now.
It’s Martina’s 20th season in Provincetown, and she’s thrilled to be back at the Crown & Anchor, where the 1889 Paris Exposition and 1964 New York World’s Fair took place. If it seems like the Eiffel Tower is too tall to fit in this room, well, it was much younger back then and had a late growth spurt. This room is hallowed ground, but you should really go next door to the Vault, where the Mayflower Compact was signed after the Pilgrims arrived from Mars.
The Crown & Anchor is still a place of import — Martina’s contract stipulates she has to get that in there. And she needs to talk about the food. “So, I came up with this,” Martina says. “The food here is restaurant-quality.”
If you don’t believe Martina is finally happy, just listen to her sing and watch her dance. The choreography is maybe a little more than she bargained for, but she’s exultant. Her covers of Lizzo’s “About Damn Time” and Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s “Murder on the Dancefloor” throw into question the value of being true to the original. Fidelity is passé. Strike out on your own.
Martina has the chops not just for a one-woman show but for a one-woman life. “I love being single,” she declares, arms cast wide. She tried to return to dating, but it didn’t work out: “Not only did the guy not like NPR,” she says, “he hated NPR.” Martina can’t get through a day without listening to her favorite NPR show, “Wait Wait … Don’t Touch Me!” Another guy gifted her a cupcake. “Nothing but a gay muffin,” she spits out. Her mother, to whom much of the show is an homage, taught her that.
Another piece of advice her mother dispensed before she died but after she passed away: never skimp on toilet paper or prostitutes. “You get what you pay for,” Martina says. “My mother, she was right about everything.”
Martina is overheating. She runs backstage for a paper towel, dabs her face, crumples it up in her hand, and there it remains for the rest of the show. “It’s not sweat,” Martina informs the audience. “It’s residual me.” Her hair freshly out of rollers, her eyeshadow and lipstick layered on so thick you can see her from Wellfleet, her blouse barely fitting over her stomach, her three brooches catching the light, Martina looks beautiful, if only because she says so. Halfway through the show, an outfit change: a dress with a slit that runs past the navel.
She takes a sip of water. “Bleh,” she grimaces. “Water from a can.” That’s the price of Provincetown, which you’ve been pronouncing wrong, by the way. It’s “Provence-town.” There, isn’t that more dignified?
Other words you’re pronouncing wrong: it’s not “character,” it’s “chair-actor”; it’s not “genre,” it’s “gonorrhea”; “February” is actually “Feh-brewery” and it’s “Sep-tem-bra,” “Oct-ah-bra,” and “Novem-bra”; “Google” is “Joogle”; “unique” is actually pronounced “eunuch.”
You’ve also been using microphones wrong your whole life: you should breathe as loudly as possible into them, and you should be flopping them side to side with your wrist. A microphone should either be held at arm’s length from your mouth or practically inside it, but never anywhere in between. There’s plenty more, but go see Martina, and you, too, can be edified.
It’s true: Dina Martina is in a good place right now, but that doesn’t mean she’s lost her rebellious streak. She’s still raging against the norms, tearing civilization apart one mispronunciation at a time, and building it into something more beautiful, if a little askew. Don’t be confused. Martina is still a renegade. After all, the most iconoclastic thing you can be nowadays is happy.
Words of Wisdom
The event: ‘The Comparable Miss Dina Martina’
The time: Thursday through Sunday, 7 p.m., through Sept. 13
The place: Crown & Anchor, 247 Commercial St., Provincetown
The cost: $40 at onlyatthecrown.com
