Playwright: Jacob Christopher Green after Richard Day. At: Hubris Productions, Hoover-Leppen Theatre. Phone: ( none listed ) ; $25. Runs through: April 5
Comedy needs a crowd. The guy one seat over may find something funny even if you don't. But if the next seat is empty, the show could be in trouble. At the second performance of Girls Will Be Girls the first-night crowd was gone, the audience was sparse and this all-drag show was in trouble despite a hard-working company. It ain't easy playing laughs to a house that isn't there. It didn't help that I was unfamiliar with Richard Day's cult film upon which Girls Will Be Girls is based.
It's a Hollywood send-up in which alcoholic, has-been B-list star Evie Harris is confronted by Varla Simmons, a brainless, big-boobed up-and-comer. Caught between them are Evie's son, Stevie, and Evie's gal pal, Coco. Of course, each character has a secret usually involving past indiscretions. The show seems to have potential as a mix of All About Eve and Mommy Dearest.
But Hubris Productions has made several fairly fundamental mistakes, beginning with the screen-to-stage adaptation. I've no idea how closely it follows the film, but the show is broken into some two dozen film-like short scenes, thereby making it choppy and episodic. In adapting screen to stage, one must combine and rearrange incidents to create longer scenes with dramatic arcs. Next, Hubris has added an intermission that's dramatically pointless. Finally, they've put in a few original songs, which wouldn't be a bad idea if the cast could sing. Indeed, the show cries out to be a musical but this adaptation doesn't go that far.
As to the performances themselves, well, de gustibus non est disputandum—each to his own taste. As Evie, Coco and Varla, respectively, Jacob Christopher Green, Jason Dabrowski and Shawn Quinlan are hefty womyn out of a Halloween-on-Halsted nightmare. They don't flaunt hairy chests or legs, but they definitely are not doing glamour drag a la Charles Busch or even local light David Cerda. Although chicly costumed ( by Green ) in a parade of 1970's fashions, the drag is crude which perhaps suits the material. After all, Evie Harris is a bitch who's fucked her way to the top and back again, numbering Dean Martin and Richard Roundtree among her conquests, and dropping zingers such as 'George Peppard! Great lay, but talk about loud, you could hear him cumming in Oxnard.' Or, in reference to her abortions, 'I've had more children pulled out of me than a burning orphanage.'
So subtle this show isn't. Stay away if jokes about drugs, rape, small cocks and French body odor offend you. But if you're familiar with the original movie, it may be just your cyanide cookie. And you can tell me if it does the film justice, because I haven't a clue.
