It took Susan Sontag over six thousand words to describe "camp," so I probably shouldn't even try. She viewed it as a "disengaged, depoliticized" aesthetic "sensibility" skewed toward "artifice and exaggeration," with a "spirit of extravagance" and "glorification of [exaggerated] ‘character.'" Even in 1964, she recognized that homosexuals "constitute the vanguard - and most articulate audience - of Camp," and that it often includes purposely "bad art or kitsch." So I think I'm in good company when I suggest the following oversimplification: Camp = kitsch + gay.
And boy, howdy, there are plenty of each in Theater Artists Olympia's (TAO's) production of The Brain from Planet X, a musical so campy it makes Glee look like the Expendables trailer.
Read the full review here.
[Black Box at The Washington Center for Performing Arts, TAO's The Brain from Planet X, through May 15, 8 p.m. Thursday - Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday, $12-$15, 512 Washington St. SE, Olympia, 360-339-2627]
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