Josh Petersen

There has been a lot to keep track of in the last few episodes of The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City. We have Jennie and Duy’s conflict over having more children, which could be the saddest plotline of the series so far. We have a new almost-cast-member who caused such a stir that unsuspecting caterers were forced to post text message screenshots in self-defense. We have so many references to fast food that I’m praying for Lisa to eat a single vegetable. But this week, RHOSLC has gotten so complex that fans are left to consult secondary sources to fully understand all of the action. Now, even more volatile turmoil is brewing. A powerful church is getting into big trouble. (No, not the powerful church.) Meredith is either the most naive or most deviously brilliant person in the whole cast. And, as we’ve known from the first moments of the season premiere, Jen Shah has dug her own grave.

All season, Jen has tried to go from “gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss” to “restore, repair, reclaim the narrative.” After (unsuccessfully) trying to reconnect with her son a couple of episodes ago, she tries to be the fun quasi-auntie to Jack and Henry by showing up to their photoshoot in a lifelike timberwolf head. (Jen and Lisa purchased two of these a month before, where Lisa helpfully observed, “Ooh they have little claws. Rewr.”) But when Lisa and Jen sit down one-on-one, Jen is caught off-guard when Lisa brings up [redacted.] No literally—names have been bleeped out to protect the innocent. [Redacted] was a dress designer who used to work for Jen, and in audio that leaked earlier this year, she viciously berates and threatens him for allegedly missing deadlines and lying about it. All of the other Housewives have heard the six minute rant, and everyone but Lisa a) knows this looks bad for Jen and b) doesn’t seem to feel sorry for her. Lisa and Jen, meanwhile, frame this as an issue of loyalty and trust (as in Jen feels betrayed by this designer,) rather than, you know, a boss horribly mistreating an employee. Lisa may appear like she’s there to support Jen, but she also just happens to bring up damaging info about one of her freminies—she saw on Instagram that Whitney gave [Redacted] free Iris & Beau products. The enemy of my enemy who is willing to plug my recently rebranded skin care line is my friend, or something. Jen, as usual, gets frantic and defensive, and Lisa foolishly agrees to defend Jen more to the friend group.

I have to imagine that the Lisa drama in recent episodes will feel inconsequential with an arrest and cult allegations on the horizon, but she really has been down bad the past several weeks. Even in a cast with no shortage of, um, abrasive personalities, she has managed to irk pretty much every other Housewife. A quick roundup: she was accused of sabotaging a charity event for Angie, one of her closest friends. Heather and Whitney have never liked her, and despite a multi-episode campaign from Lisa to change that, the cousins are still wary. She and Mary got in a fight last episode after Lisa suggested Mary might be wrong to say that sparkling water freezes your ovaries. Even Meredith seems on edge after Lisa tried to force a truce between her and Jen. It’s rough out here!

This week, Lisa takes a break from pissing everyone off to focus on her business partners/children. Lisa’s sons started a men’s hair product company called Fresh Wolf, and she insists repeatedly that this was all their idea, not hers. (You know, because it’s every 9-year-old’s dream to make it big in the men’s beauty industry.) Too much of the episode is spent exploring a week in the life of these young He-E-Os. They model and direct the aforementioned photo shoot and host a branded charity event for Utah Foster Care. The party has a limited guest list that Lisa, once again, claims was entirely their idea. That means the Marks family is included and so is Whitney, because I guess we’re supposed to believe Jack and Henry have a deeply meaningful relationship with Justin Rose offscreen? The other cast members, though, are not invited. I’m sure everyone will handle this possible slight with grace and maturity!

Everyone is invited, though, to an event that we already know will be a disaster before it even begins. During a girls’ lunch with their daughters, Meredith just happens to mention to Heather that she rented a huge ski house in Vail but has nobody to go with. She decides to invite all of her Bravo sisters—even Jen. Where have we heard of this trip before? Oh yeah, this is the one that kicked off the series weeks ago when federal agents come looking for Jen in a limo as other cast members watch in horror. Is Meredith a master schemer, or is the timing just a coincidence that would make any reality TV producer shed tears of gratitude? Whatever the truth is, Jen is blissfully unaware, and this episode milks the edge-of-your-seat tension for all it’s worth. She and Stuart make money from an “infomercial lead” that definitely doesn’t sound suspicious while she feeds him a banana. (It doesn’t make any more sense in context.) Heather then officially invites Jen to Vail while the two play ring toss with dildo headbands. (Again, I’m at a loss.) Cool high school English teachers should use this episode in their lesson plans about dramatic irony. That flop Shakespeare never exposed his characters’ hubris while they dressed for the world’s saddest bachelorette party!

Both on and offscreen, there have been plenty of punchlines about Mary marrying her step-grandpa, but this season has shown just how dark and upsetting the situation actually is. A couple episodes ago, Mary all but told Meredith that she barely tolerates her marriage to Robert Sr. This week, Mary tells Heather and Whitney that her marriage wrecked her relationship with her mom. Mary says her mom wanted to inherit her grandma’s church and business empire, and she disapproved when Mary married Robert Sr. and took over. (Maybe, just maybe, Mary’s mom also was weirded out when Mary said God told her to marry her step-grandpa.) The two haven’t spoken in 25 years. Mary then connects this somehow to her fight with Lisa over carbonation and ovaries, which, sure.

Just as Mary shares how Faith Temple divided her family, Meredith and Lisa discover the church’s damage reaches much farther. At the Utah Foster Care fundraiser, Meredith meets Lisa’s friend Cameron, who tells Meredith that he was a former preacher at Mary’s church. Heavy emphasis on the former here—without getting into specifics to a woman he’s barely met, Cameron warns Meredith that Mary and Robert Sr. have “done some things that have been very harmful.” Meredith is shaken by the conversation, and Lisa says she knows that Mary and Cameron had a falling out and that Cameron “experienced real trauma,” but she won’t share any details she knows with Meredith (at least while the cameras are rolling.) 

This all feels…fishy. It’s been an open secret for a while that Mary’s church is bad news. There were rumors before the show even started that Faith Temple was essentially a cult, and a September article in The Daily Beast put explosive allegations on the record, including verbal abuse, financial manipulation and brainwashing. I’m surprised—and more than a little skeptical—that the other cast members had no inkling that Mary’s church had a dark side. I also wonder why Lisa has had nothing to say about Mary’s behavior, which she clearly knew at least something about, for a season and a half. Is she protecting Cameron’s privacy? Protecting Mary’s? Protecting herself? As even more big secrets are about to be revealed, the collateral damage could expand far beyond Jen and Mary. As a wise woman once said, “How did the feds know you were at Beauty Lab?”

Random observations:

• Sadly, Jennie is barely in the episode this week. We do get another small segment of Karlin’s “science Saturdays.” Some streaming service should buy a science-themed educational children’s show starring Karlin. I’d watch it. (Well, I’d show it to my kids if I had kids.) 
• After rollerblading in matching T-shirts, Whitney and her brother Will have a raw conversation that feels uncomfortable to eavesdrop on. Months ago, Whitney suspected her dad Steve was not sober while babysitting her children, and she asked him to leave. Steve has not spoken to her since, even though he is keeping contact with Will. 
• Heather reveals that when she was at BYU, she was a travel companion for a little person flying to Cancún over spring break. Never a dull moment!
• Unfortunately, I must go back to the penis ring toss. It’s called Dick Head Hoopla, and when Jen says tell Heather her headband is crooked, Heather replies, “It works the same in the end.” I admire the comic timing; I hate that this game exists; I’m concerned about what Jen buys when she goes to Zurcher’s.

---

Subscribe to Salt Lake for the best of life in Utah.

With a title that’s memorable, to-the-point and a little bit cheeky (sorry), Pioneer Theatre Company‘s Ass is designed to grab your attention. Though the in-your-face title reminds you that you’re definitely not seeing Frozen (which is now playing downtown at Eccles Theatre BTW), Ellen Simon’s world premiere is not needlessly provocative, or even particularly crude. Instead, it’s a gently funny family drama that explores the difficulties of living in the shadow of genius.   

Jule (T. Ryder Smith) is a New York City sculptor known for his evocative depictions of single body parts (a big toe here, an ear there.) He is widely lauded as a genius, and he has the ego to match. He also has a strained relationship with his son Will (Ben Cherry), an art history professor who pointedly avoids studying the contemporary work his father creates. Will nervously travels to his father’s New York apartment with his bubbly wife Ana (Elizabeth Ramos) hoping to ask for financial help. The couple visits as Jule’s health is failing—while he waits for a kidney donation, he spends hours a week in dialysis with nurse Ray, (Vince McGill) who is refreshingly immune to Jule’s self-important posturing. As Jule struggles through treatment, his much younger ninth wife Tory (Laura J. Hall) obsessively monitors his health and finances as Jule slowly creates what may be his final work, a large alabaster sculpture of Tory’s ass. 

Playwright Ellen Simon took inspiration from her relationship with her famous, brilliant father, the playwright Neil Simon. Without writing a literal memoir, Simon draws from often painful situations and emotions that clearly draw from her own life. This personal history is both intriguing and, from a creative standpoint, risky. In a narrative with significant parallels to her own life, Simon’s writing could have easily come across as navel-gazing, especially considering dysfunctional families and difficult artists are not exactly unique subject matter. Luckily, Simon avoids these potential pitfalls. She is a sharp writer, with an ear for unforced dialogue that balances humor and emotional resonance. Though Will appears to be the most direct stand-in for Simon, I never felt that she wanted to settle scores or stack the deck. She writes each member of this messed-up family with nuance—their motivations are transparent and human, even if they aren’t always exactly sympathetic. You probably don’t know what it’s like to live in the shadow of a father with sculptures in the MOMA, but the feelings of jealousy and betrayal that Will feels are relatable to pretty much anyone. 

As the play’s most important character, Smith gives one of the best performances I’ve seen onstage in a long time. You know that he’s, well, an ass, but crucially, his charm and magnetism shine through too. It’s clear why the other characters can’t resist his gravitational pull—he has an easy chemistry with the other cast members that makes his obliviousness, and occasional outright cruelty, genuinely sting. Smith seems to relish the opportunity to play with the haughty persona of a capital-G Great Artist, and Simon subtly questions a culture that allows the powerful and famous to behave badly without impunity. (Jule is a womanizer with a taste for younger wives, but he is not an abuser or harasser. Still, the play’s exploration of great art made by much less great men feels especially relevant to modern debates about #MeToo and cancel culture.)     

While Smith is a clear highlight, the entire cast gives wonderful performances. Led by director Karen Azenberg, who understands the play’s intimate scale, the cast keeps their work natural and human-scaled. The two women stand out in parts that easily could have faded into the background. Ramos is a warm, charming presence whose character has the unenviable task of tiptoeing around her in-laws from hell. Hall has fun with her role as a tightly wound WASP (or, as I couldn’t help whispering to my friend, a gaslight gatekeep girlboss) who Will derisively calls “number nine.” By the end of Ass she may be the least likable character, and Hall leans into her character’s narrow-minded desperation with dark humor and surprising physical comedy. As Jule’s most frequent victim, Cherry portrays the mixture of resentment and (usually unrequited) affection he feels toward his father. Jule is certainly not wrong to describe Will as “needy,” but I also rooted for him as he tried to break through the family’s dysfunction. 

The play is less compelling when it moves away from the claustrophobic family dynamic. Ray, Jule’s nurse, is the play’s weakest character, though this is no fault of McGill, who gives a strong performance. The relationship between Ray and Jule becomes one of the most important in the play, but despite the actors’ best efforts, it never is clear exactly why these two characters have a strong impact on each other. Buried somewhere in their relationship is an interesting observation—Jule can only be emotionally intimate with Ray because there’s a clear power dynamic that he can control. Unfortunately, Ray is too thinly written for the friendship to register, and when Ray interacts with the rest of the family in the second act, he feels like a one-dimensional source of wisdom while the other characters are allowed more complexity. 

Still, you shouldn’t miss this sharply observed, intimate comedy. Though Simon’s writing has a cynical streak, especially in the tartly funny first act, Ass is sentimental at its core. Even when the characters act selfishly, she never loses sight of their genuine desire for connection and the love, as messed up as it is, that binds them together.  

---

Ass runs through Nov. 6 at Pioneer Theatre Company. For tickets and more information, visit their website. Read all of our theater coverage here.

With a dramatic arrest and cult allegations on the horizon, there is plenty of explosive drama to come in the rest of this season of The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City. At least, that’s what I’m telling myself after watching the first genuine clunker of the season. Sadly, this episode is boring front to back, and I sense that the problem stems from how rarely the Housewives are interacting as a group. Whether it’s because of the pandemic, Mary being trapped in her closet or something else entirely, there has only been one event in five episodes that every single cast member attended together. (Angie’s fundraiser, which was, no surprise, a highlight.) Plus, in this episode, the Housewives are generally on their best behavior, resolving conflicts instead of starting them. (Good for them, bad for us.) Again, there are glorious messes to look forward to in the near future, but until then, we have this week’s slog to get through.

After melting down at Angie’s party, a presumably hungover Lisa is down bad. She feels hurt that Angie sided with Whitney over her, and she calls the entire night “a waste of a Gucci outfit.” John gently suggests to Lisa that she and Whitney should try to make up. It turns out, though, that John has an ulterior motive—he likes hanging out with Justin and doesn’t want his wife’s rivalries to get in the way. 

Over in Daybreak, we learn that Whitney’s home office includes a large glamour shot of herself next to a sign defining “mamba mentality.” (You would hope she and Lisa could at least bond over interior decorating choices.) Whitney is taking a break from her boss-babe lifestyle to hang out with Mary, who arrives clad in her most extra snakeskin boots. “Apparently she leaves her closet,” Whitney quips. Mary brings cookies, and Whitney suggests that Mary could teach her daughter Bobbi to bake. Moments ago, we saw frightening footage of Mary attempting to make these cookies, so I’m guessing this wouldn’t go well. Mary then explains that she’s tired because a member of her congregation’s daughter was ejected from the sunroof in a car accident. Bobbi asks, “Is she still alive?” and Mary replies “no,” briefly pauses, says “I’m so happy to be here,” does a little dance and says “wear your seatbelt.” Horrifying! After giving Whitney’s children lasting emotional scars, the pair talk about Whitney and Lisa’s recent drama. As Whitney explains the situation, Mary says that Whitney must, on some level, want Lisa’s friendship or else she would not be so invested in this rivalry. I am shocked to say Mary…makes a certain amount of sense? When Mary becomes the most logical person in the room, that should be a massive red flag for everyone involved.

In other news, Heather’s daughter Ashley got into her dream school, UC Santa Barbara. “It’s like she’s been eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches her whole life, and she’s going to go to the Chuck-A-Rama buffet,” Heather says. I’m not sure what to make of this metaphor, but I’m happy for both of them anyway. 

Now, for our first of two (probably short-lived) makeups. After tentatively making peace with Meredith while grown men ran around screaming “TROUT!” Jen has finally convinced Brooks to meet with her privately for lunch. Meredith comes too, and though she leaves Brooks and Jen to talk on their own, her seat at the bar is definitely close enough to eavesdrop. Jen still doesn’t seem to quite know what she is apologizing for, but what her apology lacks in coherence it makes up for in sincerity. Brooks is near tears discussing the public speculation about his sexuality, and suggests that he was bullied as a child with the terms others are now using to talk about him on Twitter. Jen says she has gotten her social media team in line and adds, for good measure, “I’m sorry if you saw my gigi.” When Meredith sees the two hug, she returns to the table and, at least for now, she seems genuinely ready to forgive Jen. As a final word, Jen says, “I was deflecting [from] my vagina,” and now I’m adding a throw pillow that says “I’m sorry for what I said when I was deflecting from my vagina” to my Christmas list.

For some reason, we are subjected to a guys’ night with the Real Husbands (minus Duy and Robert Sr., who would rather slowly lose his mind alone in Florida than have any involvement in Season 2.) If I cared about any of these men, this would be a fascinating window into how straight men socialize, but unfortunately I don’t. After Sharrieff says “let’s keep those sweet ladies out of our mouths” (?) they go around the table and confirm they are all still married (??) The others express jealousy over Justin’s stripper-pole-in-the-house, we’re-not-actually-swingers-wink-wink sex life with Whitney, but he says things are not as rosy (sorry) as they may seem. Then, to my great horror, Seth says, “My deal with Meredith is I can sex with her any time I want as long as I don’t wake her up.” Everyone laughs and nobody seems the least bit bothered by this rape joke. Jail! The husbands then make a vague commitment to helping their wives find peace, love and harmony or something, but this scene does not convince me that any one of these men can be trusted.

Jennie, the only new cast member this season, has the difficult task of ingratiating herself with every other Housewives not named Lisa Barlow. Her lunch with Whitney has some awkward first-date-energy—these two aren’t quite close enough yet to have the natural rapport of friends (or people playing friends on reality TV). Jennie and Whitney are in opposite life trajectories—just as Whitney is trying to grow her skin care brand, Jennie sold most of her medical clinics to spend more time at home, and while Jennie fights with Duy about having more kids, Whitney, who mutually agreed that Justin should get a vasectomy, now second-guesses if she would like more kids. The topic of conversation, inevitably, turns to Lisa. Jennie knows about Whitney’s problems with Lisa, but she’s not one to play games about who is friends with whom. (Ahem.) However, she does defend Lisa’s good qualities, but, after hearing about Lisa’s “good side” from many friends, Whitney compares “Good Lisa” to Bigfoot, because she’s never seen her.

Because we’re in Salt Lake City, Bravo is obligated to include winter sports adventures at least three times per season. Meredith and Heather head to Solitude, and Heather gives this handy explanation about their respective techniques: “Meredith has better form but I have more balls.” After some time on the slopes, Heather discusses her parenting anxieties over Irish coffees. As Ashley prepares to leave for school, Heather worries that she has not talked enough about sex with her. While Meredith was the cool liberal mom more likely to give her kid a condom than a Capri Sun, Heather said that her family rules were “straight As and abstinence.” Though she still worries that talking frankly about sex would give Ashley a “permission slip,” now she wants to openly communicate with Ashley in a way her own parents never did. “A year ago I would have been horrified if she was considering having sex before she got married, and now I am horrified at the thought of her not,” Heather says, and though this is quite the turnaround, I understand her sentiment.

Unsurprisingly, the episode ends with a meeting between Lisa and Whitney. Over gin and pie at Alpine Distilling—“you can’t spell new beginnings without G-I-N,” Lisa explains—the two try to hash out their differences. The problem is, Lisa and Whitney just don’t have much chemistry, even as enemies. Lisa says she feels misinterpreted by Whitney, Whitney says she feels Lisa is irritating, and I am dreaming of better days when one Housewife told another that she “smelled like hospital.” Their real problem is simple—because Whitney and Lisa don’t have an actual relationship, they are left to assume the worst about each other. “You’ve never allowed me to get you,” Whitney says, and Lisa agrees: “I’ll give you that.” We then get a poor man’s astrology lesson: Lisa says she wants to “free fly and be fun” as a Sag, and Libra Whitney says she feels the same way. I have deleted and redownloaded Co-Star too many times to truly grasp what any of this means, but I’ll trust that this is some sort of good omen.  It doesn’t take much for these two to agree to reset and try to become actual friends because, at the end of the day, there wasn’t much to their feud to begin with. We end with Whitney and Lisa feeling hopeful about the future, at least until a federal-indictment-sized hole tears through the group. 

Random observations:

• I would watch a full Food Network show of Mary talking to herself while trying to make baked goods. 
• “I don’t want to go through the baby fat ever again. I worked really hard to have this body right now. I don’t want to go backwards,” Jennie says, which is valid! She looks great in her black bodysuit.
• Here are some of Heather’s formative childhood discussions about sex: At a friends’ house, she watched Taps but put a towel over the screen during the sex scene and saw a pop-up book with chickens having sex. No wonder she is messed up!
• It feels uncomfortable seeing service workers in masks while the cast never wears them. I’m assuming each Housewife was tested regularly, but it is still an in-your-face reminder of who does and doesn’t have the choice to put themselves at risk.

---

Read Salt Lake’s weekly recaps of The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City.

In Four Women Talking About the Man Under the Sheet, a world premiere from Utah playwright Elaine Jarvik at Salt Lake Acting Company, a dead body literally upstages every other actor. In 1895, Helen Pitts Douglas (Susanna Florence) is mourning the death of her husband, the abolitionist icon (and man under the sheet) Frederick Douglass, when she receives an unexpected visitor. Susan B. Anthony, (Colleen Baum) who shared a tenuous friendship with Douglass, arrives after hearing the news and tries to comfort the cordial but cold Helen. When Rosetta Douglass (Yolanda Stange), an activist and Frederick’s daughter from a previous marriage, arrives at the house, she is much less restrained with her opinions than Helen. Rosetta feels suspicious of Helen and her role in Frederick’s life and criticizes Susan for abandoning Frederick, and the cause of racial justice more broadly, to advance her goal of women’s suffrage. As stepmother and stepdaughter quarrel, Susan is haunted by the imagined specter of Elizabeth Cady Stanton (Tamara Howell), an outspoken fellow suffragist who clashed with Susan on matters both political and personal. 

Audiences think they are watching a traditional historical drama when, suddenly, a member of the audience stops the play. This moment reveals that Four Women Talking is actually a play-within-a-play, and the interrupting audience member is Zoe (Latoya Cameron), who is directing a play about Susan for a present-day theater company. Zoe and the actors are expecting a standard rehearsal, but Zoe keeps getting emails from the charitable foundation funding the production asking for changes to the script. The foundation’s director expresses discomfort at the play’s complicated, and often unflattering, portrayal of white feminist icons, and Zoe is torn between her artistic values and the need to please these benefactors. 

Jarvik’s choice of subject matter is shrewd. In real life, Susan did stay with Helen for two days right after Frederick’s death, though few details about their interaction are known. Focusing on this specific moment in history allows Jarvik to imagine activists—some well-known, others relegated to footnotes in American history—in a more intimate context, decentering their historical mythologies and political accomplishments. Paradoxically, this narrow approach allows for a more nuanced portrayal of these characters than attempting to cram in multiple biographies into an 80 minute running time. Four Women Talking probes raw debates over race and gender that resonate more than 100 years later, and Jarvik allows audiences to sympathize with all four women without overlooking their genuine flaws. Helen, who is white, was disowned by family members for entering an interracial marriage, but Rosetta (played with intense effectiveness by Stange) still distrusts Helen’s attempts to shepherd Frederick’s legacy. Meanwhile, Jarvik does not shy away from uncomfortable truths about Anthony and Stanton’s real-life racism. Stanton often disparaged Black men and excluded Black women while arguing for women’s right to vote and Anthony disinvited Douglass, himself a committed suffragist, from a women’s convention in Atlanta, calculating that southern women would not accept a movement that embraced Black men.

The tensions between these 19th century characters is mirrored in the experiences of the 21st century actors. The play rehearsal is set on the night of the 2020 Election, and the characters bond over their anger and fear after living through the brazen misogyny of the Trump era. In other ways, though, the group struggles to find common ground. Helen’s present-day counterpart feels reluctant to call herself a feminist, and when discussing the play, she questions whether Susan B. Anthony’s least savory views should be emphasized onstage. Susan and Elizabeth’s counterparts are more willing to call out the racism of white feminist pioneers, but in private, Zoe and Rosetta, who are Black, roll their eyes at their colleagues’ self-centered, navel gazing politics. The format allows the play to comment on itself without feeling pretentious, and the cast gracefully toggles between the historical characters and the actors bringing them to life. At several points, Zoe pauses the rehearsal and offers suggestions, which noticeably alter the performances we see on stage. The actual directors of Four Women Talking, Jason Bowcutt and Martine Kei Green-Rogers, cleverly deconstruct their work with the same casualness as the actors taking off their period costumes (designed by ​​Spencer Potter).

It’s difficult to dramatize political issues without pandering or turning didactic, and Jarvik mostly sticks the landing. Some of the script’s references to Mormonism felt shoehorned in to relate to local audiences. (Though Stanton and Anthony did actually form alliances with polygamist suffragists in Utah, the first state to allow women to vote.) And the play’s final climactic speech, though performed effectively, felt a touch on-the-nose for my taste. Still, Four Women Talking does not take the easy way out. In just 80 minutes, it tackles some of the most contentious issues of American history, embraces their complexity and finds that, for better and worse, some debates are never really over.

---

Four Women Talking About the Man Under the Sheet runs through Oct. 31 at Salt Lake Acting Company. For more information or to purchase tickets, visit SLAC’s website. Read more of Salt Lake magazine’s theater coverage.

In the mid-1880s, an Italian opera singer with a beautiful falsetto became a Utah sensation. Madame Pattrini was a favorite of Utahns for more than 15 years, performing at music venues, church socials and even Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints President Lorenzo Snow’s birthday party. The catch? Pattrini was actually a man, though some audience members allegedly were fooled by his high singing voice and glamorous costumes. The other catch? Madame Pattrini’s real name was B. Morris Young, and he was one of Brigham Young’s 56 children.

There is no evidence that B. Morris Young, who was married with 10 children, was queer. But for LGBTQ people, especially gay men, drag has long been an essential underground art form. And drag has a history even in the conservative Beehive State. 

The Royal Court of the Golden Spike Empire was founded in 1976. “It started here as a social organization to support the community and create an opportunity for people to connect,” explains Peter Christie, who has been involved with RCGSE since the ‘90s. Decades before legal gay marriage and broader mainstream acceptance, the group, which has chapters nationwide, fostered community—they even started Utah’s yearly Pride celebrations. Members started performing drag as a way to fundraise for local charitable causes, which grew into an essential fundraising tool as the community was ravaged by the AIDS epidemic. “It became a real brotherhood and sisterhood of people who came together to perform and be entertained,” says Christie. 

As RCGSE nears its half century mark, Christie acknowledges that the organization’s role has changed. Now, LGBTQ people are less reliant on queer safe spaces to find acceptance and dating has largely moved from bars to apps. (There are actually fewer gay bars in Utah now than in the 1970s.) As the community has changed, so has drag. “In the ‘90s, it was very difficult to be paid as a drag performer, particularly here in Salt Lake,” Christie says. Even the best Utah drag queens volunteered for free and kept tips to fund makeup and costumes. But in the past decade, thanks to an expanded community of queer people and allies and the popularity of shows like RuPaul’s Drag Race, drag has evolved in the Beehive State. The opportunities are bigger—and the standards are higher. “It’s harder to just go and lip sync to a song. You have to put together a production,” Christie says.

Even for casual fans, it’s clear that the Utah drag scene has exploded in the past several years. The sheer number of performances is overwhelming—weekend shows at queer-friendy bars, brunches at coffee shops and restaurants like Pig & A Jelly Jar and year-round touring productions from nationally popular queens. You don’t even need to go Downtown to see drag anymore—there are shows in Ogden, Park City and, yes, even Provo.

Perhaps nobody represents this shift better than Jason CoZmo. CoZmo was born and raised in Magna, but he left Utah soon after high school to perform. After a stint as a Disneyland character, he performed drag for years in southern California, New York and Atlantic City. He became especially known for his Dolly Parton impersonation—on a Good Morning America appearance, even the real Dolly couldn’t tell the difference between CoZmo and herself. But despite his Utah roots, CoZmo assumed that he couldn’t find work here. “I always thought, ‘I need to live in a big city to not only be accepted socially but also to make a living.’”

But after CoZmo inherited a house in Utah from his grandfather, he stayed here as a home base for touring. While taking his act across the country, he began to perform in local clubs—straight clubs. As his following grew, his impersonation show Viva La Diva moved to its current home at Metro Music Hall. Viva La Diva is now his full-time gig, with 40-50 performances per year. CoZmo is an auteur in a wig and heels—he’s the star, director, producer and costume supervisor for a roster of impersonations ranging from Vanilla Ice to Bette Middler. 

CoZmo knows that his audience stretches beyond stereotypical drag superfans, and he’s proud of it. Early on, when another local queen made snarky comments about CoZmo’s largely straight audiences, he retorted, “straight people have money too!” For CoZmo, these diverse crowds are a golden opportunity for comedy. “I’ll make fun of the white trash from Kearns, the Mormon wives with their Botox from Herriman and the little gay bottoms on the front row,” he says. Still, CoZmo feels a responsibility to share a message of acceptance, recalling drag’s long history as a political performance. “I wasn’t preaching politics,” he says. “Just me doing what I was doing was a political statement.” By inviting all kinds of people into what he calls his “sanctuary,” he hopes to change hearts and minds. “What other event would you go to where the bishop’s sitting next to the drag queen and the Republican is sitting next to the Democrat and they’re all having a great time?”

This sort of broad appeal can be both validating and anxiety-provoking for the queer people who remain drag’s target audience. Drag Race, the elephant (or, more accurately, 6’4” man in a dress) in the room, has created an entire new industry, complete with merchandise, lucrative media opportunities and corporate sponsorships. On the one hand, this mainstream embrace is a heartening example of the dramatic shift toward acceptance of LGBTQ people in the broader culture. On the other hand, there are real questions about what is lost when a transgressive underground art form is so easily commodified.

While the debates persist, local queens, far removed from big-name TV shows, still use drag an essential avenue for self-expression. This year, at RCGSE’s annual Gay Pride Pageant, two queens competed for the title of Miss Gay Pride. Horchata, who was brand new to drag, and Tara Lipsyncki, a San Francisco transplant and local MC who won the title, gave distinct performances, ranging from a hip-hop dance to a Doja Cat song to a number from the musical Mean Girls (with puppets!). Longtime members of RCGSE met with friends they’d known for decades and patiently explained to me the complex web of leadership roles and pageant titles—emperors and empresses, imperial mothers and fathers, crown princes and princesses. (Seriously, I’m still trying to figure it out.) In between the competition, current and former leaders lip-synced to their favorite songs. Some were in pageant gowns, some were in jeans and a t-shirt and it was all about as far from reality TV polish as you can get. But drag’s messy, beautiful origins were still intact—queer people, in community with each other, putting on a damn show.

---

Read more in our September/October issue. Subscribe here.