PROVINCETOWN, Mass. — Varla Jean Merman made her entrance at the top of the show dressed as a syringe of vaccine. Shimmery and skirted, the costume was perfectly matched to her solo show’s double-entendre title, “Little Prick,” and its opening number, a comic ode to vaccination sung to the tune of the Kool & the Gang song “Celebration.” The hypodermic headpiece was tricked out to squirt liquid, of course. “Honey, did I get any on you?” a faux-solicitous Varla asked a man in the front row one evening in late July. “Well, don’t worry.
It’s just bleach.” Joking. She was joking. And Provincetown — wary in the wake of a coronavirus outbreak here that made national headlines and gave the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention new insights.