GayWired.com – By Jacob Anderson-Minshall
Twist, a queer pop-rock musical that opened December 1st in L.A., weaves Victorian erotica, dark comedy and gender-bending into Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist, imaging Oliver as a young man searching for love. Driven by physical desire, but begging for more, Oliver journeys into an underworld ruled by a male dominatrix with a nasty temper—Fagin—played by Alexandra Billings.
“[This] is the first time in twenty-plus years of theater that I’ve ever played a man,” exclaims the trans actress, whose novice years included shows with luminaries like Carol Burnette, Yul Brynner and Sandy Duncan. Formerly a female impersonator, Billings made the leap to professional acting in the 1980s, when she starred in Chicago’s rendition of Charles Busch’s Vampire Lesbians of Sodom.