I really WANTED to find Divas to be "amazing", but I'm afraid it just wasn't. When, at the end of the show, Frank Marino tells the audience how his has been the #1 attraction on the Strip for 28 years running, I was left thinking how could this be? Perhaps, a few years ago, when he wasn't walking through his performance -- and by the way, his "impersonation" of Joan Rivers is so far off it is laughable, and a bit sad. The gowns are quite something, but nothing I could ever imagine La Rivers really wearing. Bob Mackie? Don't think so for the real Joan.
Marino seems like a very sincere person, and I liked that he donated all the proceeds from the sale of various items of Divas merchandise to the Make a Wish Foundation. His material is tired, as well. Most of his jokes were outdated and went right over the heads of many in the audience.
His cast features variously talented drag queens doing all the standard divas, past and present. All needed to brush up their lip-synching skills. Some were more successful than others in looking like who they were supposed to be (Celine Dion, Dolly Parton, Shania Twain) but others were laughably off-kilter (a plus-sized Beyonce and Tina Turner, for instance). If I thought all these dissonances were deliberate, I would applaud the cleverness. I have a feeling, though, they weren't. RuPaul's Drag Race and a great many gay bars around the country do this kind of stuff much much better.
The bright spot -- at least for this gay man (and most of the women present) -- is the troupe of studly back-up dancers who are technically highly competent and the only folks onstage who appear to be enjoying what they do.
The venue, by the way, is appalling. Bad sight lines, cruddy old dirty booths and trestle tables. Looks like a converted high school auditorium. Really nasty.