Call it “Madame Butterfly” with ADHD.  “Grey Arias,” which is running only through tomorrow at the Flea, stars an unlikely duo whose divergent life experiences, talents and idiosyncrasies shape a show that initially seems a self-indulgent if often entertaining hodge-podge, but sharpens into a resonant political critique of Puccini’s opera.

Adrienne Truscott is a former burlesque queen from Linwood, Pennsylvania who always wanted to star in “Annie,” but instead became a choreographer, acrobat and comedian, though still performing naked, as she does at one point in this show.

Le Gateau Chocolat, born George Ikediashi in west London and raised in Nigeria, is an opera singer, drag diva and cabaret performer with a powerful baritone who speaks with a plummy English accent.

They met abroad twenty years ago, performing in other people’s shows, and decided to create one of their own together. 

That “Grey Arias” is going to be about “Madame Butterfly” is established in the first scene, when Chocolat enters wearing a kimono and brandishing a Japanese fan in gorgeous silhouette against a rich red backdrop, then across the stage, Truscott stands on a stepladder against a blue background in white nautical regalia. They are cosplaying the two central characters in Puccini’s opera about American naval officer Pinkerton who marries and impregnates teenage geisha  Cio-Cio-San and then abandons her, leading to her suicide. There are scenes and songs from the opera throughout the hour, but rarely played straight. In that first scene, lights come up on bearded Chocolat singing Tina Turner’s “Private Dancer” followed by Truscott lip-syncing “American Boy” by Estelle.

The show is threaded with what seem at first digressions and diversions — performance art, clowning around, personal reminiscences about their respective careers, projections of text messages between them, in-person banter:

“I could never stand on stage naked,” Chocolat says, after Truscott has done so.
“You could,” she replays.
“ I couldn’t. I haven’t. I wouldn’t. I’ve always been fat. I’m the fattest I’ve ever been….”
“Well, babe, I’m the oldest I’ve ever been.”

What becomes startlingly clear is that their personal experiences – including their experiences with racism and sexism  — merge with their views of Puccini’s opera and broaden their critique.

At one point, they pipe in a scene from the opera with surtitles that show Cio-Cio-San telling Pinkerton that she’s fifteen years old.

Truscott is appalled. “This isn’t a love story. This is a musical about statutory rape.” And then she tells us, somewhat obliquely but unmistakably, of a relevant experience she had at age 15.

Chocolat corrects her – it’s an opera, not a musical – and explains why he can’t feel the same way about it; he saw Leontyne Price perform the opera when he was a child; “it was the first time I saw myself on stage.” 

“So the first time you saw yourself on stage was as an African American woman’s idea of an Italian man’s idea of a Japanese fifteen year-old?”
“Exactly”

“Grey Arias” ends with a hilarious mashup of “Madame Butterfly” and “Annie” that would alone be enough to make the show worth seeing. But, for all its wit and its weirdness, there is something profound about the questions “Grey Arias” asks, explicitly and implicitly, about some of the gray areas of art and life.

Grey Arias
The Flea through March 7
Running time: About 75 minutes with no intermission
Tickets: $36
Devisors and co-writers: Adrienne Truscott & Le Gateau Chocolat  
co-director and dramaturgy Rose Jarboe
Sound design Kim Busty Beats Bowers
Lighting design Connor Lovejoy
video design and additional sound design Carmine Covelli