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Hello, Dollies
SNAP!’s Valley of the Dolls is perfect parody
BY WARREN FRANCKE
The SNAP! parody of Valley of the Dolls made me want to laugh all the way to a video store and rent the 1967 movie. Performances by Michal Simpson and Adam Nathan were so outrageously entertaining you knew the original must have set new lows for overwrought soapiness.
Credit a crazy gender-switching cast and at least two off-stage geniuses, director M. Michele Phillips and video designer Mark Cramer, for a show that’s funnier than the former holiday hit at the SNAP!/Shelterbelt theater, Christmas with the Crawfords.
Phillips manages to maintain a style that elevates parody to its own burlesque caricature of frenetic pill-popping. Cramer took his video work, which added fun to such shows as The Secret of the Old Queen, and raised it to another level from start to a finish full of out-take credits.
Simpson may go on to play some serious roles, but he’ll be lucky to top his inspired silliness as Neely O’Hara (Patty Duke in the movie) in her rise to stardom and fall from “dolls,” the uppers and downers she kept quaffing by the mouthful. Whether awkwardly curling up stoned on a love seat or his rock-bottom pleading, “Where is everybody?” after driving everyone away, he’s hilarious.
And his work weds best with Cramer’s video creativity when we see Neely singing in garish makeup on a cystic fibrosis telethon hosted by Joey Bishop.
Contrasting with Simpson’s delicious scenery-chewing is the moon-faced Nathan’s demure Anne Wells. He’s either an appropriately bad actor or a master of understatement, maintaining a flat serenity even when a dildo falls from her purse. He also combines with Cramer when Anne is cast in an ad campaign as “The Gillian Girl,” who Cramer shoots in both coy close-ups and perched atop a rocky peak.
But it’s far from a two-man (as women) show. Female-impersonating pro Steven Knox in the Sharon Tate role, presents Jennifer North as the classic femme fatale drag queen, and Ron Osborn doesn’t fall far from his many turns as Joan Crawford when he dons his own Susan Hayward creations as Helen Lawson, a tough broad who sings in deep whiskey-and-cigarette tones.
Two favorites among the women playing men were the always-appealing Chelsea Long as lounge-singer Tony, Jennifer’s love, and Thomas Lowe who shined in several roles, but especially as Tony’s sister. Long’s Tony breaks up the audience in another of Cramer’s video highlights when he snaps out of his sanatorium stupor to sing a lively and off-key, “Come Live with Me,” duet with Neely before dropping back to drooling.
Osborn fashioned his own costumes, but Nancy Ross made many other outfits that added to the fun, and Echelle Childers worked on some memorable wigs, including Helen’s topper that Neely dunks in the toilet. Childers also played the fickle agent, Lyon Burke, who first breaks Anne’s heart, then offers to marry her only to hear her softly admit, “I don’t feel a thing.”
Rhonda Hall’s name shows up as props honcho on almost every theater around, and here she gets credit from director Phillips for collecting a motley array of items, including plenty of those brown plastic pill bottles. Whether she or Childers or Knox himself came up with Jennifer’s big blonde wig, it certainly matches the perfectly piled-on excess of everything else in the show.
The small opening-night audience may mean most playgoers have either forgotten or never heard of the Jacqueline Susann book or movie. You don’t need the slightest awareness of it to enjoy what this cast is sending up through the roof.
Speaking of the author, Phillips notes that she walked out on the movie, and adds, proudly, “If Ms. Susann were watching” this parody, “she’d stomp out of the theatre again in a heartbeat.” Most of us, on the other hand, will stay until the final spoofing credit.
Valley of the Dolls runs Nov. 11-Dec. 12, Thurs.-Sat. 8 p.m. (except Thanksgiving Day), Sun. 6 p.m. (except Dec. 12, at 2 p.m.) by SNAP! Productions at SNAP!/Shelterbelt Theatre, 3225 California St. Tickets are $20. Call 341.2757 or visit snapproductions.com
posted at 03:12 pm
on Wednesday, November 17th, 2010
‘Valley’ is bad, which is good
A stage parody of the 1967 movie is campy fun.
B Y BOB FISCHBACH
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER
Barbara Parkins, one of the stars of the 1967 movie “Valley of the Dolls,” perhaps said it best.
At a sold-out screening in 1997, Parkins told the pumped up crowd, “I know why you like it . . . because it’s so bad!”
Now SNAP! Productions has mounted a stage parody of this laughable melodrama. SNAP! has cast men as women and women as men, raising the odds you’ll love this show for its badness.
“Valley of the Dolls,” by Jacqueline Susann, was the top selling novel of 1966. In it, three women become friends as they start out in show business. Each becomes an abuser of “dolls,” slang for addictive, mood-alter ing pills, while falling for the wrong man. Or men.
In the movie, Parkins played Anne, a talent lawyer’s secretary who falls for cad agent Lyon Burke and becomes a model. Sharon Tate was Jennifer, a chorus girl/sex object whose lover Tony has a fatal disease.
Patty Duke chewed the most scenery as Neely, a climber whose acting career is temporarily held back by aging musical diva Helen (Susan Hayward).
Neely becomes a big star but craters because of drug abuse, failed relationships and general nastiness.
None of the SNAP! players looks like the film stars. Bad wigs, heavy makeup and wildly divergent gaps in age and body type only add to the campy fun.
SNAP!has a history of doing this kind of thing, notably with its perennial cross-dressing hit “Christmas With the Crawfords.”
The set is just curtains and furniture. Period 1967 costumes, on the other hand, are a highlight, carefully chosen by Nancy Ross and Ron Osborn. Osborn, who plays Helen, has lovingly re-created many of Hayward’s outfits from the film, and he’s a stunner in them.
Since the movie script and acting were a study in wretched excess, it’s no surprise that’s what director M. Michele Phillips heaps on us in this production, often to hilarious effect. Brief songs by Neely, Helen and Tony add to the layered badness.
Every awful line and hysterical scene from the film pops up here, including the cat fight in which Neely tries to flush Helen’s wig, Jennifer’s post-abortion funk and disastrous calls to Mommy, Anne’s heartbreak that Lyon won’t marry her, and Neely’s many screaming fits while swacked out on “dolls.”
The script’s short, choppy scenes make pacing and flow a problem. Filmed segments with creative graphic effects by Mark Cramer fill an overhead screen to fill gaps. They’re at least as hilarious as what happens onstage (Adam Nathan as the Gillian Girl is burned onto my brain). Outtakes roll at the end, next to faux movie credits.
Nine cast members, most in multiple roles, all excel at being intentionally awful, but Michal Simpson as Neely retains the scenery-chewing crown. He’s very funny. Other highlights: Steven Knox’s drag-queen take on Jennifer, Osborn’s imperious witchiness as Helen (scary!) and Chelsea Long as troubador Tony.
The show lost some steam in the second act, but parody this broad is hard to sustain. Running time is about an hour and 45 minutes, including intermission.
Contact the writer:
444-1269, bob.fischbach@owh.com
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