StlToday.com – By Gabe Hartwig – St. Louis Post-Displatch
Varla Jean Merman (Jeffery Roberson) is optimistic about her future as a female impersonator: “The glass is not half empty – the glass is half not drunk.”
She brought her delightfully raunchy show, “The Very Worst of Varla Jean Merman,” to the Sheldon ballroom on Thursday night as part of Cabaret St. Louis.
Though Merman (she says she’s the secret love child of Ethel Merman and Ernest Borgnine) has been performing a lot longer, the show is a celebration of her past 10 years of touring. She even began the show with a celebratory cocktail. (“I’m not going to drink the entire show – just until the twitching stops.”) “I started doing the videos [on the Internet] before those 10 years,” she explained. “But we don’t add those numbers together.”