Ever seen a grown man put his entire body through a wire coat hanger? Or a woman do a three minute handstand with a bulls-eye on her behind? A juggling bearded lady tossing pins and Borscht-belt one-liners to a 6'2" drag queen? These are just some of the weird wonders awaiting you at Cracked Ice, or Jewels of the Forbidden Skates, a gender-bending musical romp through post-Madoff alternative America.

But for all its eccentricity, the production's campy celebration of all things queer feels undeniably familiar. Here we are again at P.S. 122, guffawing over the same old double entendres and drag queen mincing as if it were still the Reagan era. And maybe that's not such a bad thing—there's something sort of comforting in knowing you can still crowd into an insufficiently air-conditioned downtown theater and watch the counterculture assert itself, even if it's not exactly pushing any envelopes. In that sense, the fitfully amusing Cracked Ice at least succeeds as a chance for like-minded outsiders to reconnect with their community.

The production is written, directed, and co-stars Jennifer Miller, the director of political performance troupe Circus Amok, with additional text by playwright Deb Margolin, as well as musical stylings by Kenny Mellman (Kiki and Herb). Intertwined with the aforementioned bizarre performance art numbers is an absurdist parody of Bernie Madoff, whose victims include a bearded lady vaudeville star named Sybil Liberty. The story of her revenge is rather broad and amateurish, and the earnest monologues for a transsexual Madoff character, written by Margolin, seem strangely out of place alongside the rest of the show's high camp. But there are some great Busby Berkeley dance numbers, and enough winning one liners ("She puts the con in conceptual art!") to forgive the script's deficiencies. When it stops striving for torn-from-the-headlines relevance, Cracked Ice is a reasonably gay old time.