Friday, June 12, 2009

Theater reviews: Mommie Queerest and Death: The Musical

By Arnold Wayne Jones of Dallas Voice

JOAN LOVES TCHOTCHKES: This ain’t Mama Crawford’s (Coy Covington, center) first time at the rodeo, fellas — as Mommie Queerest captures the grandeur of badeur at the Rose Room.

Any movie can be bad; Mommie Dearest isn’t just bad, it’s the Gone with the Wind of camp — awfulness on an epic scale, where so much goes wrong it kinda works as entertainment, if not art.

It’s little wonder, with the costumes and melodrama and general terribleness, that gay men have adopted it as one of their own, as ill-fitting in civilized society as a 6’4” bearded drag queen at the country club ball.

So playwright Jamie Morris’ decision to adapt it to the stage as a satire, primarily by sticking with key dialogue and the same plot, poses a conundrum: To make a satire of camp, you have to be even more outrageous than what you’re lampooning, and do you really want that?

In the case of Mommie Queerest (now playing at the Rose Room in Dallas), yes. While there are dull, awkward valleys occasionally, the actors (Chad Peterson, Kevin Moore, Paul J. Williams and Coy Covington as a scary Joan Crawford) don’t hesitate to play it to the hilt. No one spares a resource if he can make it work. Williams drudges up his Sister Helen Holy persona for a quick scene at a nunnery that sends the audience rolling in the aisles. Peterson’s take on Louis Mayer resembled a Kids in the Hall sketch with Bruce McCullough.

If it’s all a bit presentational, it’s also funny. If Faye Dunaway became famous for channeling Joan Crawford, but Covington channels Dunaway: Like a horse itching at the gate, he’s so full of facial tics conveying Joan’s mania, at times he appears to be having a series of small epileptic seizures. Even his “hand acting” in the opening video sequence is ripe with hilarious exaggeration. There’s more mugging onstage at the Rose Room than at midnight on a warm summer night in Central Park.

The cast, under the direction of Andi Allen, amps up the soapy melodrama, with homages to Jaws, Psycho, The Bad Seed, even The Rocky Horror Picture Show (you know the lines; go ahead, shout them out). What if it lurches around (a staggering 33 scenes in 90 minutes) in a hit-or-miss style? Chalk up the lame parts to the source material, and revel in what does work. No need to be mad at the production — be mad at the dirt.

There’s nearly as much melodrama in Death: The Musical, a world premiere playing at Pocket Sandwich Theatre. Composer-playwright Scott A. Eckert’s paean to Noises Off by way of Pegasus Theater with a sampling of catchy songs is a comic corkscrew of a behind-the-scenes murder musical.

The third-rate cast of a fourth-rate play find their members slowly being killed off, but with the mandate that they also continue on with the performance. Like the recent Broadway hit Curtains, it makes about as much sense as political analysis on FoxNews. But within the strained conceit of the plot, Eckert has structured a dandy showcase for his clever lyrics and twisted sense of humor. (One of the best running gags, where the audience hears just the last words of seemingly salacious dialogue, runs out of steam before I wanted it to.)

Like Mommie Queerest, it’s a parody of a shopworn format (the drawing room mystery) and is necessarily filled with stock characters, intentionally lazy dialogue and cliché developments. Those sometimes work against the play, due in part to Regis Allison’s often static direction. When it gets rolling — as in the sharply farcical entrance-and-exit ballet in Act 2 — the visual interest moves up a notch.

With so many characters, most with their own solos, the show sometimes lacks focus and impact, but Eckert’s Sondheim-esque patter buoys it. This Death could — and should — live on.

Pegasus News content partner - Dallas Voice
The community newspaper for gay & lesbian Dallas.

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