Funny girl Boozical the Musical is high-spirited BY BILL RODRIGUEZ
	Boozical the Musical:The Unorganized Biography of Doreen Collins With Doreen Collins and James D. Carroll. At Firehouse Theater on August 12, 25, and September 15.

Boozical the Musical: The Unorganized Biography of Doreen Collins is a lot like the low-key, amiable Return of the Secaucus 7, John Sayles’s paean to just hanging out. And not, since there’s little Las Vegas glitz and song-belting in the film. But what’s in common is the personality of the actress we’re watching, who could be doing a dramatic reading of the Gettysburg Address and be absolutely charmed.

Collins has been performing this comical cabaret act this summer at the Firehouse Theater in Newport with Chunga (aka James D. Carroll), a fellow Ocean State Follies regular. This two-person OFS spin-off has all of that satirical revue’s irreverent humor but goes for a niche audience, definitely not the blue-nose crowd. Collins adds a bawdy, X-rated dimension that would stop a Pacemaker faster than a broken microwave.

We get spoofs and homages of showgirls from Liza Minnelli (including a hi-cal rendition of "All That Jazz") through Madonna and Cher to Britney Spears. She throws in a Carmen Miranda rendition, complete with fruit basket on her head and Spanglish accent. The show is basically a showcase of the duo’s favorite shtick and naughty bits, a random enough grab bag to include Chunga doing a pretty good rendition of "Proud Mary" simply because he can and wants to.

Clever act. Not just because of the satirical songs and snipings that work (Madonna: "I even tried a same-sex date / Sandra Bernhard scared me straight") more often than they tank (Cher: "If I don’t let it all hang out / Soon I’ll be pissing out my mouth"). No, it’s the successful chemistry between Collins and Chunga. It’s like watching Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney’s eyebrows salute as one of them pipes up, "Hey — let’s put on a show!" Boozical doesn’t have a studio budget assuring Hollywood production values for a show in a barn (or a former firehouse), but that disparity is part of the enjoyment. It was actually an advantage that a last-minute fill-in on the sound board was flubbing some of the music cues — watching them good-naturedly cope just made for more fun.

This show may have come about mainly to allow Collins to assemble a wardrobe of costumes that would make her a goddess in Cranston or get her arrested in Boston. (The Cher outfit with the Indian headdress looked awfully drafty from behind.) For Britney, Collins even gets poured into a red vinyl jumpsuit as she lip-synchs a song, at one point letting a hand take over, puppet-fashion, while she chugs a Labatt.

Poor Cher comes in for the most abuse, in both blond and raven-haired incarnations. We learn that she’s thinking of becoming a midwife so she can be in on the birth of her next boyfriend. And Liza isn’t far behind, as Collins clamps on eyelashes the size of tarantulas and makes fun of the dueling lawsuits with purportedly gay ex David Gest. One song that doesn’t work, breaking the naughty but good-natured mood, is "Let’s Talk Dirty to the Animals," as Collins plays a lubricated mom singing her kids to sleep with an off-color ditty.

Collins introduces Chunga — her nickname, short for chimichanga — by saying that she could only afford one chorus boy, so she bought a big one. A theme of the show is that they are pals offstage. Onstage he plays the big, gay, eye-rolling foil reacting to her manic act and vamping while she changes costume. But Chunga is a bonus as well as an extra, with a take-charge attitude and considerable performance skills, which seem throttled back in deference. Echoing her choreographed moves in the musical numbers, he has his own assured presence.

Collins’s professional background is as funny as her show. She faced her first big audience at age 8, hoofing on a bill with Diana Ross and the Supremes. She’s joked that her only Off-Broadway starring role was in a 1989 show, Farewell Performance: The Last Truly Great Girl Group, whose name was longer than its run.

Chunga was in numerous summer musicals at the now defunct Theatre-by-the-Sea, as rotund supporting characters such as Officer Krupke in West Side Story. And he played Snoopy in a Rhode Island College production of You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown, which gives you an idea of his genial stage manner.

This cabaret act is being advertised as B.Y.O.B., which is actually true as well as a joke. But whether or not the groaners among these campy antics will drive you to drink, there will be a moment or few when you’d like to be able to lift a glass to toast these two irrepressible spirits.