Theater review: Mommie Queerest

by Ed Townley of John Garcia's The Column

If you're looking to spend an evening hanging out with friends, having a few drinks, laughing (or groaning) at bad jokes and proving your camp credentials by shouting out classic lines from the film version of Mommie Dearest in chorus with a roomful of like-minded camp followers, you should find Mommie Queerest – the new play (to use the term loosely) by Jamie Morris that Uptown Players has just opened at the Rose Room in Station 4 – more than adequate for your entertainment needs. If, however, you are hoping for the spark of creative energy that has made previous UP productions – Valley of the Dolls, Legends, The Facts of Life: The Lost Episode – so hilariously memorable – well, maybe a few more drinks will help.

The cast is uniformly talented and hard-working, and the material is certainly ripe for satire and comic embellishment. But Morris's script is half-hearted at best. It finds a lowest common denominator and stays there, assuming that its target audience doesn't need anything more to go away content. I like a good fart joke as much as the next guy; but that doesn't mean that five minutes of the same fart joke endlessly repeated will leave me weak with laughter. It leaves me feeling the time could be better spent finding something a little wittier, a little sharper to say about Joan Crawford and the Hollywood world she inhabits.

That's just one example. I could go on – endless squirting water schtick, a simulated sex scene that manages to be both tame and lewd without ever being funny – but, really, why bother? The overall energy is so good-natured that it feels downright churlish to resist in any way. Still, it could have been so much more.

The premise on which the script teeters is that Joan Crawford was really a man in drag. Now, that's not without its intriguing possibilities as a dramatic line-through. But none of them is really explored. And, given that Joan Crawford is, in fact, played by a man in drag, it gets confusing. The always exceptional Coy Covington is here not playing Joan Crawford – or even playing Faye Dunaway playing Joan Crawford. No, he's a man playing a man playing Joan Crawford. In the first act, when other characters make the predictable jokes or scornful remarks about falsies and duck tape, I assumed they were making out-of-character references to Coy Covington, the actor playing Joan. But no, they were referring to the man the actor was playing, who was in turn playing Joan. But since we never actually meet that man behind the legend, so to speak, there's no place to focus the humor, and it just sort of wimps away.

Comedy, no less than tragedy, has to be about something. There has to be a problem, a desired outcome, and a strong structure on which all kinds of outrageous gags and incidents can then be hung.

The Valley of the Dolls script, to take one recent Uptown Players example, had that in spades. Mommie Queerest does not. At best it provides a checklist of random scenes lifted from the movie and twisted in sometimes amusing ways. The result really isn't theater; it's more like a frantic gay burlesque. It's fast and loud – the sound system is set at earsplitting – and it's helpful to remember that the bar service continues throughout the entire evening.

And there's always Coy Covington, elegant and haughty, bringing a sort of demented dignity to even the most outrageous situations. Strangely enough, I found his character study most intriguing when it was least scripted – during a brief nightclub scene in which he moved through the audience with a kind of needy hauteur, graciously signing autographs for people who had not, in fact, requested one. It was funny and – geez – almost touching; it suggested that a very different play might be lurking in the shadows.

Chad Peterson is an expert comic foil as the very young Christina Crawford in the first act, and really comes into his own as the character matures in the much livelier second act. He has found rich comic possibilities in not always trying to outshriek his harridan mother, but in often undercutting her manic energy with a deceptive sense of calm. Very nice work. Paul J. Williams particularly shines as the long-suffering servant Carol Ann, torn between her loyalty to Joan and her concern for Christina; and Kevin Moore provides able and essential support as, oh, about a dozen different characters.

Director Andi Allen has the cast working together tightly and smoothly, so comfortable with each other that even minor mishaps become part of the fun.

So there you have it. This production of Mommie Queerest is blissfully free of deceptive advertising. It is what it is. If you can't wait to see it, don't let anything I've said discourage you. You are its target audience, and you will have a good time.

If I may be allowed to end on a personal note, this review ends my association with John Garcia's The Column, as I am moving this week to Hartford , Connecticut. It's been a wonderful gig. I am extremely grateful to John for the opportunity and support he's offered me – and in general for the incredible amount of work he does in support of Dallas/Fort Worth theater. I am grateful to all of the creative talent – onstage and off – that have provided me with so many powerful evenings and memorable moments. I leave convinced that the DFW theater community is second to none in terms of talent, commitment – and fellowship. It's been a privilege to observe and appreciate it – even for too short a time.