Conquest of the Universe or When Queens Collide

It’s been 50 years since Charles Ludlam’s Ridiculous Theatrical Company first bestrode the downtown world like a queer colossus. Everett Quinton, who was Ludlam’s lover and ran the RTC after Ludlam’s 1987 death, now directs and stars in an attenuated revival of one of the company’s earliest works, a campy outer-space riff on Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine the Great. It's interesting as a historical curio, especially when Quinton is onstage, but the play's high-low combination of Elizabethan drama, Flash Gordon sci-fi, topical references and jokes about farts and rape surely seemed fresher half a century ago.