How 'The Big Gay Jamboree' queers classic Broadway musicals

The latest show from Marla Mindelle, known for the hit parody musical Titanique, celebrates and spoofs the shows the majority-LGBTQ+ company grew up loving.

It’s here, it’s queer, get used to laughing yourself silly at it.

Seriously. Laughing is exactly what the new musical The Big Gay Jamboree is all about. Running off Broadway now at the Orpheum Theatre, the show and its mostly queer cast and creative team puts a loud-and-proud, LGBTQ+ twist on classic musicals on Broadway and on screen.

“It’s going to feel a lot like Oklahoma! meets Music Man meets Seven Brides for Seven Brothers," said Marla Mindelle, who co-wrote (with Jonathan Parks-Ramage and Philip Drennen) and stars in the show. “It’s going to take you on a wild gay roller coaster. Strap in.”

Mindelle is best known as one of the award-winning creators and original stars of the Off-Broadway hit Titanique, which similarly puts a silly, queer, musical spin on the 1997 movie Titanic. “We all grew up on classic musicals,” she added. “That’s what we know and love, and so to be able to bring our own mentally deranged spin on it [...] that’s most exciting.”

The plot follows Stacey, a young woman who, after a boozy night, wakes up in a Golden Age musical. Now what? She uses her wiles, her BFA in theatre, and a powerhouse belting voice to get home.

“It’s The Wizard of Oz on Fire Island,” said cast member Natalie Walker, referencing the popular gay vacation destination off Long Island. Her favorite old-school musicals are Guys and Dolls and Carousel: “I’m a child of TCM. I grew up on old movies. What has always been surprising to me is how covertly queer a lot of that stuff is.”

Walker cited a scene from the 1938 screwball comedy Bringing Up Baby starring Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn. At one point, Grant slips reluctantly into a marabou-trimmed robe. Asked why, he leaps into the air and exclaims, “Because I just went gay all of a sudden.”

When it comes to the subject of being queer, “they’re constantly playing at it and winking at it,” said Walker. As the title suggests, The Big Gay Jamboree doesn’t shy away from its queer vibe.

“I think classic musicals made us gay, so we’re kind of returning the favor,” joked Drennen. “We have lots that we reference in the show. I do have a special place in my heart for Oklahoma! It was the first musical that I ever did.”

Parks-Ramage, meanwhile, acknowledged that the 1965 The Sound of Music movie musical, starring Julie Andrews, was game-changing for him: “That helicopter shot of her with the hills being alive. That turned me gay.”

Send-ups of the Oklahoma! song "Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin'" and the Sound of Music's "Do Re Mi" appear in The Big Gay Jamboree alongside many others. The show, Parks-Ramage added, is “a love letter to old musicals. But our love language is trolling.”

Cast members Alex Moffat (Saturday Night Live), Constantine Rousouli (Titanique), and Paris Nix (Hamilton) agreed that the classics are ripe for spoofing – and that they’re having fun doing that in their show.

“All these musicals from the Golden Age are so gay,” said Rousouli. “It's nice to play it up and actually call out what they were really trying to cover up back in the day.”

Or, in other words, to amplify the subtext. Walker referred to the recent Off-Broadway hit Cats: The Jellicle Ball as an example of a show that reimagined the source material and turned up the queerness to remarkable success. “It completely reinvents the way we perceive it, even though these undertones [...] might have been there all along,” Walker said.

Director/choreographer Connor Gallagher welcomed the joy of getting to lean into queerness in his work in the show rather than having to “sand down the edges,” he said. “I loved living in this world.”

Get The Big Gay Jamboree tickets now.

Gillian Russo contributed reporting to this story.