Take a fullback-sized guy from Louisiana, put him in a wig and a dress, and tell him to sing opera. Pretty funny, right?
Well, when the cross-dressing dude is the gifted singer Jeffery Roberson, and the opera is Menotti’s spellbinding “The Medium,” the result is prime musical melodrama.
Roberson’s best-known for his raunchy “Varla Jean Merman” persona in gay clubs and TV appearances. But here he played it straight and serious as spiritualist Madame Flora, whose sham séance is interrupted by a visitor from beyond the grave.
Unmiked in the intimate Marjorie S. Deane Little Theater, his light falsetto hit all the right notes, even if he sounded a bit demure in Flora’s second act mad scene. His pop vocals, though, blended easily with the more operatic sound of the rest of the cast.
As Monica, the medium’s daughter and unwilling accomplice, Stefanie Izzo brought a warm Puccini-sized soprano to her two arias, and Peter Kendall Clark’s firm baritone won sympathy for the swindled Mr. Gobineau.
Director Donna Drake kept the show straightforward, and even devised an improvement on Menotti’s 1948 libretto.
In most productions, Monica’s mute chum Toby rattles a tambourine in response to her songs. Here, Edmund Bagnell answered by playing the violin, proving equally moving as actor and instrumentalist.
Music director Elizabeth Hastings provided firm piano accompaniment from just beyond Mike Steers’ spooky tenement set. Costumer Carol Sherry draped Roberson in slightly shabby floral sheaths that looked like hand-me-downs from Joan Harris on “Mad Men.”
Grand opera it’s not, but this “Medium” offers plus-sized enjoyment.