Arts & Culture

What: Oraculum
Where: Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, 12 Alexander St.
When: Now, until Sat., Dec. 14
Highlight: Pythia’s surreal, extravagant costume design
Rating: NNN (out of 5)
Why you should go: Oraculum’s handful of lip-synced numbers are fantastic and help justify the show’s existence.

WHILE BUDDIES IN Bad Times remains the most prominent theatre space in the Village, walk down Church Street on a Friday night and you’ll spot live performances unfolding in bar after bar. This is in large part thanks to the city’s flourishing drag scene, where a blend of artistic disciplines — from dance to standup comedy to costume design — combine in front of young, rowdy crowds of the kind most established theatres would stab for.

Enter Buddies’s Oraculum, created and performed by Canada’s Drag Race alumni Denim and Pythia. The second mainstage production of artistic director ted witzel’s tenure, the 90-minute show is a canny programming gesture that should hopefully foster some productive audience cross-pollination. In a press release, witzel called Oraculum, which he’s the director of, “a hybrid of drag and theatre that offers a sexy pagan alternative to the heterosexual capitalist fluff on most theatre stages in December.” That’s an exciting proposition (and the “pagan” promise certainly pays off), though this hybrid form turns out to be a little shaky on its feet, never quite coming together as intentionally as one might hope.

Ghostwriter Lauren Gillis’s script concerns the well-intentioned Kayleigh (Denim), a publicist and self-identifying bimbo, as well as the snaky Matt (Pythia), an influencer turned desperate entrepreneur. The former’s proximity to stars like JoJo Siwa makes her the target of increasingly vicious manipulations from Matt; she copes by developing a tarot-reading addiction, as facilitated by online psychic Madame P (Pythia over video). Through this engagement with divination, the piece asks whether queer people are better positioned to criticize the mainstream because they stand outside it. But Oraculum only brushes on these ideas — for the most part, its bubbly, exaggerated plot lives closer to the silly but endearing realm of a frivolous Hollywood screwball (pre-Code, of course).

witzel leverages the entire width of the proscenium stage, alternating centre-stage two-hander scenes with monologues performed behind scrims located to the far left and right. Set, projection and lighting designer Cosette “Ettie” Pin doesn’t play around, either, with Madame P’s scenes proving extra stylish (she’s framed by projections of her garish, Y2K-esque website). Drag Race fans will also appreciate steph raposo’s sound design, which features a voice cameo by season nine winner Sasha Velour, whose own venture into the world of theatre, the solo show Smoke & Mirrors, stopped by the Danforth Music Hall in 2019.

Oraculum’s handful of lip-synced numbers are fantastic and help justify the show’s existence. Pythia’s costume design gets more and more surreal as the evening goes on, with one climactic duet involving a floating lampshade. But the queens are noticeably less comfortable during the scene work. While this is perfectly reasonable in and of itself, it makes the show’s structure difficult to embrace: Before the first number arrives (20 minutes or so in!), Oraculum feels rootless and overly talky. On opening night, for instance, when Denim first entered, the audience started cheering, seeming ready for some fun. But, instead, a long monologue ensued, sapping the room’s energy. A more spirited opening might have better fuelled Oraculum — as it stands, it takes quite a while for momentum to accrue.