Wigs Up, Worries Down: The 5 & Dime's 'Georgia McBride' Sparkles Where It Counts

There’s a particular kind of magic that happens when a show about transformation actually transforms its audience along with it. The 5 & Dime’s The Legend of Georgia McBride pulls it off more often than not — and when it does, it sparkles.

Matthew Lopez’s 2014 comedy follows Casey, a down-on-his-luck Elvis impersonator in a sleepy Panama City bar who stumbles into the world of drag when his boss gambles on a new act to save the place. It’s a sweet, funny, occasionally piercing piece — part fish-out-of-water comedy, part coming-into-yourself story — and directors Christopher Collinsworth and Madelene Skinner’s production leans cheerfully into its sitcom heart.

The headline here is Brandon Hines as Miss Tracy Mills. Hines, whose years as a professional drag queen are on glittering display, turns in a performance that is astonishingly assured: he can land a one-liner and a lip-sync with equal authority, and he holds the stage every moment he is on it. He makes drag look like the easiest thing in the world, which is the surest sign that it is not.

Equally surprising — in the best way — is Greg Hewitt as Eddie, the bar’s beleaguered owner. Hewitt begins the show as a slouching, sartorially challenged, mildly dragphobic schlub, and ends it as a flamboyant convert to the cause. The journey he sketches in between is a masterclass in character-arc craftsmanship: every step earns the next, so that by the final scenes his transformation feels not just funny but genuinely moving.

Cate Frostman gives Jo, Casey’s pregnant wife, a sweet innocence shaded with real grief. Her frustration over Casey’s fecklessness reads as loving rather than shrill, and when she believes she has been betrayed, the hurt lands. Allen Morton’s Rexy is a beautiful hot mess of the most welcome variety — his monologue on what drag actually is arrives like a small fist to the sternum, and the rest of the show wisely does not try to top it. Levi Reeves brings a delightfully retro sitcom energy to Jason, like a modern-day Mr. Roper wandered in from across the courtyard with an extra dose of charm.

Zachary Jones holds the center of the show as Casey — a tougher job than it looks, since Casey is essentially the straight man (in every sense) to the more flamboyant figures orbiting him. Jones plays him steady and earnest, giving the louder performances something solid to push off of.

The production’s difficulties are mostly technical. Blocking creates the bigger problem: exits are not always used consistently, so it can be unclear where a given doorway is supposed to lead from one moment to the next. Scene transitions also run long — long enough, at the end of Act 1, that several audience members audibly wondered whether intermission had begun. And the sound design relies heavily on canned effects that frequently fall out of sync with the action; practical sound — a real glass clink, a real door slam — would serve the show’s grounded comic rhythm better. None of this is fatal, and a tightening pass would do wonders.

What The 5 & Dime has put together, in the end, is a genuinely fun night out — a show with sitcom-level antics in service of a story that has something real to say about identity, reinvention and the people who hold us up when the wig slips. The production keeps things funny and warm without ever turning maudlin, which is exactly the trick Georgia McBride asks of any company brave enough to mount it.

Go for Hines. Stay for Hewitt. And leave room for one of the more charming local nights of theatre this spring.

The Legend of Georgia McBride runs Friday, May 29 through Saturday, June 13 at the The Florida Ballet.

For more information, full cast and crew credits and links to tickets, visit the The Legend of Georgia McBride page here on JaxPlays.