Spies, breakups and thick glasses: Philly’s Pig Iron Theatre obsesses over Aimee Mann in ‘Poor Judge’

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Dito van Reigersberg, co-founder of Pig Iron Theatre and creator of the drag cabaret personality Martha Graham Cracker, really, really likes Aimee Mann.

“There’s something about art — any art — where you have to pay attention to your obsessions,” he said. “This piece really came out of me becoming incredibly obsessed with Aimee Mann.”

The singer-songwriter emerged in the 1980s as the frontwoman of the band ‘Til Tuesday (“Voices Carry”). Her later solo work marked by moody, cynical, and literate songs has won her a Grammy Award and a spot on NPR’s list of Best Living Songwriters.

In Reigersberg’s eyes, Aimee Mann is an everyman.

“Everyone has a sad, introverted, heartbroken person inside of them,” he said.

To prove that point, there are seven Manns in “Poor Judge,” Pig Iron’s new show premiering at the Wilma Theater this week as part of the Philly Fringe Festival. Everyone onstage is a distinct version of her, wearing a blonde wig and chunky black glasses. It’s a theatrical army of Mann.

“We’re not trying to tell a biography of Aimee Mann. There’s nothing very realistic about what you’re seeing,” Reigersberg said. “It’s surreal. It’s strange.”

Reigersberg describes “Poor Judge” as a hybrid of cabaret and experimental theater, with the band of Aimee Mann clones performing original arrangements of 10 Mann songs while acting out a series of vignettes that vaguely describe the aftermath of a romantic breakup.

Music director Alex Bechtel said it makes sense that after a bad breakup, when everything reminds you of your loss, those dreams would be populated by Mann.

“It’s like if you and your ex both loved Aimee Mann and saw her in concert, and all you hear when you go to the coffee shop or the bar is her music,” Bechtel said. “It’s like a physical manifestation of that feeling.”

Sorting through the loss after the end of a relationship, Mann enters the dreams of the characters onstage, with her own obsessions in tow.

“It has a dreamlike episodic structure that is inspired by the music of Aimee Mann and what she is obsessed with, which includes things like human awkwardness, and being a movie star and how weird that is,” said van Reigersberg. “Not that she’s a movie star but she likes peeling back the idea that it’s glamorous and fun, and actually a very surreal way of life that she can observe from a distance.”

Reigersberg conceived “Poor Judge” several years ago and started workshopping the performance in 2022. But shortly thereafter he was diagnosed with leukemia and stopped performing altogether. Earlier this year he emerged from treatment and began performing cabarets as Martha Graham Cracker. “Poor Judge” is Reigersberg’s first Pig Iron production since his bout with cancer.

The story inside of “Poor Judge” is fragmented and nonlinear, more impressionistic than narrative. Bechtel arranged some songs very close to how they are heard on Mann’s albums, such as the basic rock format of “How Am I Different?” from “Bachelor No.2” (2000). Others take a radical departure, such as an a cappella version of “Poor Judge” from “Mental Illness” (2017).

“What I’ve tried to do is knit them to the performers who are singing lead and who are driving them with their instruments,” Bechtel said. “So that it has a bespoke, homemade feel.”

Reigersberg teased that beneath the dreamy musical voyage is a sneaky little spy caper woven throughout the performance. Mann’s signature chunky glasses, which everyone onstage wears, double as covert masks.

“Being a spy, observing people when they don’t know you’re watching them. Watching yourself,” he said. “There are all these ways in which having a bunch of Aimee Manns looking at each other makes sense with her particular kind of music and her kind of obsession with observation.”

“Poor Judge” will run from Sept. 11 to 22 at the Wilma Theater.