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Showing posts with label psycho beach party. Show all posts
Showing posts with label psycho beach party. Show all posts

Saturday, February 16, 2013

PSYCHO BEACH PARTY • Stray Dog Theatre

High camp is in store for those who check out Stray Dog's latest offering, Charles Busch's Psycho Beach Party, that debuted off-Broadway in 1987.  This lively romp fuses those old beach blanket surfer flicks with a little Alfred Hitchcock, and because it's Charles Busch, there's some drag thrown in for good measure.  Hooray!

Chicklet Forrest (Ben Watts) wants to be a surfer girl on the 1960's Malibu beach scene, but everyone sees her as just a kid.  In addition to this, she's got a little multiple personality issue.  Her most formidable personality is called Ann Bowman -- a femme fatale type out to bring everyone she meets under her sway.

At the start, while Chicklet is hanging out with her friends, the blonde sex-kitteny Marvel Ann (Suzanne Burke), and best buddy, the rather dorky Berdine (Anna Skidis), they meet Kanaka (Paul S. Cooper), the cool kid of the Malibu surf, and his pals, Star Cat (Zach Wachter), a psychiatry student turned surf-bum, and surfer hangers-on, Provoloney (Jake Ferree) and Yo-Yo (Paul Edwards) -- these two are too busy denying the feelings they have for each other.  But none of them take Chicklet's surfing aspirations seriously, until her alter-ego, Ann Bowman, makes an appearance in front of Kanaka.  After a few moments of confusion, this persona gets Kanaka's engines revving.