Charles Busch to Debut New Comic Melodrama

Charles Busch

Charles Busch, the writer, singer and actor famous for comic melodramas, is back with a new show in which he stars as a cabaret singer.

Busch’s The Confession of Lily Dare  , directed by Carl Andress, is slated to run April 4 to 29 at Theater for the New City, 155 First Ave. as Busch brings his latest character to life.

The show is being promoted as a production that is “played against the gaudy tapestry of turn of the century California’s notorious Barbary Coast.”

Audiences will see “the story of one woman’s tumultuous passage from convent girl to glittering cabaret chanteuse to infamous madame of a string of brothels.”

Busch’s latest show parodies the 1930s tearjerker movies such as Madame X, Frisco Jenny and The Sin of Madelon Claudet.

Busch, whose work ranges from Vampire Lesbians of Sodom to Die Mommie Die, often parodies certain genres. He more recently appeared in Cleopatra (2016), Judith of Bethulia (2012), and The Divine Sister (2010), which producer Daryl Roth transferred for an extended Off-Broadway run.

All three productions, directed by Andress, sold-out at Theater for the New City, which presents Charles Busch’s work.