September 13, 2008
Drag role propels humorous 'Psycho Beach'
If it's true that girls just want to have fun, how do you satisfy the voracious appetites of a spunky Gidget-like teen who suffers from multiple-personality disorder? That's the tongue-in-cheek question raised by "Psycho Beach Party," Charles Busch's spoof of silly surf-and-sand flicks of the early 1960s, as well as more earnest split-personality films like Hitchcock's "Marnie" and "Spellbound."
Busch's satirical targets are even more dated now than when the play premiered in 1987, but teenage angst and sexual identity confusion are eternal. Vandivort 2nd Stage's maiden production, directed with a fine sense of the ridiculous by Tim Caldwell, offers campy, over-the-top humor scored to such era-defining hits as "Where the Boys Are," "Bobby Sox to Stockings" and "Pineapple Princess."
The 2000 movie version (which I haven't seen) starred Lauren Ambrose as Chicklet, but it's hard to imagine sullen Claire of "Six Feet Under" projecting the girlish glee of Alexander Grelle in his first "leading lady" drag role. (His riotous outing as Hysterium in Tent Theatre's 2007 "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum" served as a kind of cross-dress rehearsal.)
All skinny legs and arms, with a tiny washboard chest stuck somewhere in between, Grelle's Chicklet is every girl's pubescent nightmare. She longs to join the sexy surfer dudes as they catch endless waves at Malibu Beach, but is dismissed as a kid until the day hunky Kanaka (Bryan Benware) glimpses her darker side: Just as it did to poor Tippi Hedren in "Marnie," the color red unleashes in Chicklet a randy alter ego born of past psychological traumas. How she copes with the affliction is the plot, which I won't spoil here.
Along for Chicklet's wild ride are her best friend, Berdine (Kaci Wilhoit); surf king Star Cat (Adam Gilgour); sassy sexpot Marvel Ann (Stephanie Judkins); B-movie film queen Bettina Barnes (Addie Barnhart); and inseparable surfing buds Provoloney and Yo-Yo (William Hudson and Meghan Carver), whose true feelings "come out" to the triumphal strains of Tchaikovsky's "1812 Overture."
Jackson McKeehan and Myra Lewis offer funny support and join five others to form a "Go-Go-Greek Chorus" that shakes and shimmies to tunes such as "Wipe Out," "Hawaii Five-O" and "Bikini Beach."
Special mention must be made of Chris Lewis as Chicklet's overprotective mom.
His drag routine actually hits a nerve, going beyond the merely humorous to the truly grotesque.
With a voluminous figure that makes the late Divine seem positively svelte, and decked out in a pastels-and-pearls parody of June Cleaver, Lewis proves riveting in his all-too-brief scenes.
One demented look, as he stares into the middle distance with crazed self-satisfaction, would stop Joan Crawford in her tracks and is, by itself, worth the price of admission.
"Psycho Beach Party" plays today at 7:30 p.m., Sunday at 2 p.m., then Sept. 18-27 at Vandivort 2nd Stage, 440 S. Campbell Ave. For tickets ($14 and $16), call 831-8001.