Don’t call it a comeback, but New York City’s irreverent theater troupe Vampire Cowboys are back with REVENGE SONG, a scorched-earth musical farce set—mostly—in seventeenth-century France.

Julie d’Aubigny—a queer, cross-dressing swordswoman—and her band of lovers and adversaries turn the sarcasm up to ten in this unexpected Geffen Playhouse diversion written by Qui Nguyen and directed by Robert Ross Parker.

“Satire is what closes on Saturday night,” opined playwright and wit George S. Kaufman, but Cowboys co-founder Nguyen concocts a hilarious mix of aggression and buffoonery, scored with contemporary hip-hop and 1980s-style power ballads. The brilliant comedic timing of Margaret Odette (Julie) and Amy Kim Waschke (as MC Madame de Senneterre) bring these hardcore heroines to raucous life.

REVENGE SONG—A VAMPIRE COWBOYS CREATION

Through March 8.

Geffen Playhouse

10886 Le Conte Avenue, Westwood, Los Angeles.

Qui Nguyen, Revenge Song, from top: Margaret Odette; Beth Hawkes and Odette; Amy Kim Waschke; Odette and Hawkes; Hawkes, Odette, Tom Myers, and Eugene Young (foreground); Myers, Young, and Noshir Dalal (right); Odette and Dalal; Odette and Waschke; Odette, Waschke, Dalal, Young, and Myers; Myers and Hawkes; Odette. Photographs by Jeff Lorch. Images courtesy and © the performers, the photographer, the Vampire Cowboys, and the Geffen Playhouse.