(Charles Isherwood’s article appeared in the New York Time, 5/5/13.)
Strange as it may seem in these days of increasingly blurred gender norms, watching a woman dressed as a man singing songs of love for women may actually be a more exotic entertainment today than it was a century ago. In “The Girl I Left Behind Me,” a lovely show that opened on Sunday night at the 59E59 Theaters, the gorgeously gifted singer Jessica Walker and the writer Neil Bartlett conjure a vanished novelty of the theater, the cross-dressing female performers who once fascinated large audiences in England and America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.