I should be jealous. After all, Doug Wright graduated not only from my alma mater (NYU), but from the same department (Dramatic Writing) with the same degree (MFA), a year after my own commencement. Now here I am, a frustrated critic, while Mr. Wright’s plays have already won HBO and MacArthur Awards and have been staged at Yale, the Actors Theater in St. Paul, and the Mark Taper Forum. The only thing keeping my green-eyed monster in check is the author’s unmistakable talent, and in Buzzsaw Berkeley, currently running at the cozy WPA Theater, that talent is given wide and enjoyable berth.
Mickey Looney and his adoring girlfriend, Judy Gorgon, have the bad luck to live in a town in which singing is verboten. Seems every time someone opens his throat to warble, terrible things begin to happen. Of course, these atrocities don’t happen to Mickey and Judy, so these precocious, all-American icons decide to put on the proverbial show in a neighbor’s barn. Complications arise when the barn’s owner insists that his babydoll daughter, Prudy Doody, be given the lead role instead of Judy. If that isn’t enough to make Judy moody, the bizarre deaths of all the actors sure is.
There’s a Freddy Krueger-like explanation for all this, as well as an ending that satisfies even as it holds to the standard “evil triumphant” climax of modern horror flicks. Before the final corpse count, we also get hilariously twisted quotes from works as disparate as "The Exorcist" and Long Day’s Journey into Night. Little of this is truly pointed or satirical, just affectionately funny.
It’s one thing to come up with a great concept: unite an old Judy Garland/Mickey Rooney B-movie with a mad slasher film; it’s quite another to make the idea work for two hours. Mr. Wright and his co-conspirator, Christopher Ashley, toss out groan-worthy puns, lampooned cliches, and more quotes from Hollywood’s golden age than even Lypsinka can remember. Not all the gags are—pardon the contextual pun—screamers, and perhaps the piece drags a tad by the middle of the second act, but where else can you see a bunch of plucky, fresh-faced kids puttin’ on a show featuring demonic possession and depraved limericks, not to mention a scaled-down, Pythonesque version of the Rape of the Sabine women?
There’s music, too. Michael John LaChiusa’s charming and intentionally derivative melodies complement his droll lyrics and perfectly fit the show’s play-within-a-play format. Most fun are the foolproof “That Demon Baby of Mine” and the clever conceit of having Judy attempt suicide by singing—an open invitation to be stuffed or stabbed or any number of other inventive murders that brighten the evening.
Shauna Hicks is fine as Judy, her warm voice and perky personality make her the kind of gal no chainsaw maniac can resist. Keith Reddin, best known as a playwright (last year’s Big Time) lacks command as a singer, but he’s pure good-natured energy with just a hint of the macabre. The hammy but still mirthful performances of Ethyl Eichelberger give the show a not-unwelcome campy edge. Though no Charles Busch when he impersonates a decrepit chanteuse, Eichelberger makes a delightful deranged Daddy Warbucks from hell.
The writers offer a pleasant surprise by not making Judy Doody a no-talent. As played by Vicki Lewis, she’s still a hateful prima donna, but we’re spared the shopworn “lousy-actress-in-a-lead-role” shtick. Ms. Lewis may be strident and occasionally unintelligible, but she’s sharp, funny, and can sing when she has to. Her Linda Blair is devilishly comical.
Also praiseworthy are Peter Bartlett as a nerd in extremis, Becky Gelke as sarcastic piranha bait, and John Hickock who manages to display ample hoofing talent while playing a character who has no dancing ability. Don Newcomb’s costumes are appropriately thrift-shoppy (and amusingly ravaged, along with their wearers), while set designer Edward T. Gianfrancesco makes the most of hats, signs, and a jack-o’-lantern jukebox.
The aforementioned Charles Busch connection is not mere coincidence. Busch’s The Lady in Question, now at the Orpheum Theater, was the first play in the WPA’s proud venture, the “Silly Series,” of which Buzzsaw Berkeley is the second production. Silliness without stupidity is as vital to theatergoing as seriousness without turgidity, and probably harder to pull off. Christopher Ashley, Michael John LaChiusa, and Doug Wright manage this feat handily and give us a tasteless treat in the process. I’d even tell Wright so at our next college reunion. Of course, I might be carrying my own buzzsaw at the time . . .
