Review: Arias With a Twist Goes Down Dry

We know we’re in for a trip from the first moments of Arias With a Twist, the fabled collaboration between puppet designer Basil Twist and drag performer Joey Arias, now playing a return engagement at HERE, where it premiered to great acclaim in 2008.

A ludicrous number of curtains pull back to reveal the Dream Music Orchestra, an old-fashioned big band composed entirely of puppets. They lull us into a trance before sending us into orbit. A vision of outer space unfolds, underscored by Klaus Nomi and a voiceover introducing “the oracle of pagan rituals, timeless and ageless.” That turns out to be Arias, strapped into a rotating gurney and surrounded by ghostlike aliens. He wails the opening lines of Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir” as the aliens go in for the probe.

This is your friendly reminder to hit your weed vape before you enter the building.

Arias and Twist have created a show of pure imagination and unapologetic delight. If you missed it the first time around, don’t let this chance pass you by.

Arias is an undoubtedly magnetic performer, pulling the audience into his spell with “Jungle of Eden” (an original song by Alex Gifford) as a snake puppet weaves in and out of the scenery. Arias takes us along for the ride on his own hallucinogenic trip during a medley of the Beatles songs “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” and “Within You, Without You.” It’s a journey that goes to hell and back again, with Arias channeling divas as diverse as Céline Dion, Billie Holiday, and King Kong. It’s catnip for homosexuals of a certain age (this reviewer included), and a big wet kiss for puppet nerds of every generation.

Twist, the visionary behind Symphonie Fantastique, delivers high fantasy on a stage where puppetry animates and enhances everything: exotic flowers, leggy chorus girls, and Arias himself. Twist directs the production, which benefits from Ayuma “Poe” Saegusa’s dramatic lighting design and Daniel Brodie’s playful videos. It’s like stumbling into a lost episode of The Muppet Show, banished from the airwaves and living in exile as a cabaret act beneath Dominick Street.

Make no mistake: This is a museum piece. The puppets of the Dream Music Orchestra have literally been removed from their display case just outside the theater and dusted off for this remount (Twist spoke with TheaterMania about the challenges of getting his puppets performance-ready in a city where the kind of shops that offer the material he works with are rapidly dwindling). Some of the pieces show their age.

Very little has changed in the script, but Arias has: The voice is thinner on top (and not helped by Greg Duffin’s uneven sound design), though he can still squeal a whistle tone and, like Mariah, relishes showing them off. The eyelids are a bit droopier (always unfortunate when this secret weapon of drag expression is concealed) and the movement generally stiffer. But the Billie Holiday impression is still very much on point, and Arias has lost none of his lust for performing, miming fellatio at every conceivable opportunity.

It’s not new, but Arias With a Twist is a lot more creative and watchable than much of what passes for off-Broadway theater in 2026, when so much of the stage has been ceded to inaccessible experiments and preachy issue plays. Arias With a Twist is worth seeing as a reminder of what downtown theater can produce when it liberates itself from the tyranny of expectation. Hopefully, its victory lap will encourage young puppeteers and alternative drag artists (I highly recommend the Brooklyn queer bar C’mon Everybody if you want to spot some of those as they rise) to create their own unexpected masterpieces.