Tag: Everett Quinton

Interview: Everett Quinton in “Galas”

On By dramaqueennycIn interview, Off-Off-Broadway, Opera, play, theatreLeave a comment

I have had the great pleasure of directing Ridiculous Theatre legend Everett Quinton twice, in the New York premiere of Tennessee Williams’s Now the Cats with Jewelled Claws and a staged reading of Charles Ludlam’s Medea. The Williams play got some terrific reviews, which you can read here (and you can see some lovely photos here). Charles Ludlam was perhaps the greatest playwright to come out of the Ridiculous Theatre movement, and Everett was his partner in art and life.

Now Quinton is directing and playing the lead role in Ludlam’s fictionalized tribute to opera diva Maria Callas, entitled Galas, in its first New York revival since its original 1983 run. I sat down with this humble genius to talk about it.

So how did this revival of Galas come about?

It was suggested last fall. I’ve been working with the Yorick Theatre Company. Chris Johnson, who is the Artistic Director of Yorick, talked with Pastor Mark Erson who is the Artistic Director of Theatre at St. John’s Church on Christoper Street, where Yorick performs. They came up with the idea of doing Galas – because of the Stonewall 50th anniversary and World Pride – suggested it to me and I said “good.”

Is this a role you’ve wanted to do?

Yeah, people over the years have suggested it, but there was never the opportunity to do it. Now that it has, I’d be a fool to say no; its a terrific part. I’m having fun with it. When you’re directing it and you’re in it, like I am with this, there are so many pots on the stove. But now me and the other actors are starting to cook! [Laughs] I love the actors in this group, they’re a wonderful group and we’re finding our way.

There’s humor in everything Charles wrote, but am I right in thinking this is one of his more serious plays?

It does play as more serious, yes. That’s the beauty of it. It starts out one way and it flips midway, which is not accidental on Charles’s part. You carefully study the script and he sets up the flip early on. I’m really enjoying exploring that. When I was in the original production, for which I also did the costumes, I didn’t worry about the big picture. So that’s a joy of this production for me. It’s around this time that Charles blossoms from a good writer into a really fabulous one, so skillful. We all improve as we go along, right?

Funny thing is, this big play was originally supposed to be a two-hander for me and him, about an actress and her maid. I don’t know what was going on at the time that provoked him to turn it into a life of Maria Callas. Because usually that’s the way he worked, something in the air tweaked him.

I know this is fictionalized – she’s named Galas not Callas – but I recall that it actually tracks pretty closely with Callas’s life.

Pretty closely, except there’s a couple of things I couldn’t make sense of and then I realized that’s the fictionalized part. I thought I knew from the original production that the last act takes place in Paris – and it doesn’t [Laughs], that’s the fictional part. But it is a close tribute, and I’m using her speaking voice. All of the scene changes are her singing.

I love that Callas demanded a dollar more than all her contemporaries – she would say “so-and-so’s getting so much so I want a dollar more.” I love her arrogance, and when you realize who those contemporaries were, you realize oh my God she had cojones, she had ovaries. [Laughs]

Are you an opera fan yourself?

A fan, yeah. I have no intellectual conceptions about it, I just love it. Tony Randall called it the greatest of art forms, which is arguable. Those singers just do so many wonderful things. I mean I walk around the apartment pretending to be one. When I got the costumes for the original production, I had a decent budget and I found this beautiful green dress for Charles to wear as Galas. But when I first got it home, I wore it and went around the apartment pretending I was soprano Shirley Verrett [Laughs]. So I’m a lip synch opera queen. Charles liked opera but there were bigger opera queens in the company and our chatter could annoy him. I called it “gay baseball,” we talk about opera and musicals like straight guys talk about baseball.

For tickets, click here.

To learn about Jonathan Warman’s directing work, see jonathanwarman.com.

Review: The Artificial Jungle

On By dramaqueennycIn Off-Off-Broadway, play, review, theatreLeave a comment

Ridiculous Theatre legend Charles Ludlam’s The Artificial Jungle is essential queer theatre viewing – and one hell of a lot of fun. The late, great Ludlam founded the Ridiculous Theatrical Company 50 years ago, creating a singular style of campy but rigorously structured theatre committed to outrageousness without apology, but also without any kind of knowing wink.

Jungle was Ludlam’s final play and mercilessly yet lovingly parodies film noir. As was often his wont, Ludlam turned to an older and more sturdily built model, Émile Zola’s Thérèse Raquin – a tale filled to bursting with lust, murder and horror – for the plotting. For the dialogue, however, he takes film noir‘s “hard-boiled” schtick, turns the heat all the way up and lets the whole thing boil over.

The director for this production is Ludlam’s husband and muse, Everett Quinton (whom I have had the great pleasure of working with several times). Everett is the ideal interpeter of Ludlam’s plays, knowing when to be loyal to what Charles had already done, and when to push things even further into preposterousness to keep it fresh.

Quinton has a marvelous cast to work with, who seem to truly get it. David Harrell takes on the role Ludlam wrote for himself, Chester Nurdiger, the schlubby, happless owner of a New Yawk pet shop, and Harrell gleefully puts the “nerd” in Nurdiger. Alyssa H. Chase plays his frustrated housewife Roxanne with energetic and angular vampiness. Hunky Anthony Michael Lopez takes Quinton’s role, Zachary, an interloping hired hand, which he delivers with muscular intelligence. Anita Hollander takes the one-time drag role of Mother Nurdiger, and puts it across with an appropriately drag-sized performance. Rob Minutoli has terrific comic timing in the small role of Officer Spinelli.

A key part of the action is a tankful of piranhas, which designer Vandy Wood has crafted with the obvious theatricality that is such an important part of the Ridiculous aesthetic, and which puppetmaster Satoshi Haga imbues with surprising expressiveness and personality. Hilarious, and highly recommended.

For tickets, click here.

To learn about Jonathan Warman’s directing work, see jonathanwarman.com.

Review: Drop Dead Perfect

On By dramaqueennycIn Off-Broadway, play, review, theatreLeave a comment

DROP-DEAD-PERFECT Everett-Quinton-left-Michael-Keyloun-standing-and-Jason-Cruz-right-in-photo-by-John-Quilty.

Well, this is fun! Drop Dead Perfect may not be the most substantial show ever to pay homage to “Ridiculous theatre”, but it is undeniably frisky and entertaining. It doesn’t hurt that it stars Everett Quinton, the greatest living actor in the Ridiculous tradition (and among the very best in any tradition, as far as I’m concerned).

In a story right out of the Alfred Hitchcock playbook, Quinton plays Idris Seabright, a wealthy, eccentric Key West grand dame with a psychotically unhealthy obsession with decorum and stillness, embodied by her love of painting still life. When Idris’s ward Vivien (Jason Edward Cook) threatens to abandon her to pursue sculpture in Greenwich Village, and handsome young Cuban relative Ricardo (Jason Cruz) turns up out of nowhere, her “still” life erupts into unhinged mayhem.

Idris is a delicious gargoyle of a role, and Quinton attacks it with high energy, maniacal precision and an almost supernatural conviction. Quinton expertly adds a sense of real danger and moments of sudden deep seriousness into the mix as well.

Director Joe Brancato has successfully led the other actors to a similarly vivid, kaleidoscopic acting style. Cook, for one, has created such a believably feminine character that other audience members I spoke with were surprised to see the name Jason in the program.

Both Jasons (Cook and Cruz) have a gift for athletic comedy, which Brancato uses to great advantage. Timothy C. Goodwin, who plays both the narrator and Idris’s lawyer Phineas, has a more wry, low key demeanor, which acts as a wonderful anchor and foil for the loons bouncing of the walls around him.

As the names Vivien and Ricardo suggest, this frothy concoction owes at least as much to I Love Lucy as to Hitchcock. Indeed there are Lucy references laced liberally (and comically) throughout the story. Drop Dead Perfect succeeds as a lighthearted tribute to Ridiculous theatre, and is in any event lots of fun. Recommended.

For tickets, click here.

To learn about Jonathan Warman’s directing work, see jonathanwarman.com.

Review: The Mystery of Irma Vep

On By dramaqueennycIn Off-Broadway, play, review, theatreLeave a comment

mystery-of-irma-vep robert-sella-left-and-arnie-burton-in-the-

This is easily Ridiculous Theatre legend Charles Ludlam’s most-produced play, and the fantastic production at the Lucille Lortel Theatre richly demonstrates why. The Mystery of Irma Vep is an affectionate parody of horror stories and thrillers from Shakespeare to Alfred Hitchcock. From the secret crypts of Egypt, where mummies cast enthralling charms, to the murky moors of Mandacrest Mansion, where werewolves and vampires are constantly creeping around, this highly theatrical spoof, if done well – as it is here – is truly astonishing.

On the most fundamental level, it’s really important that somebody is doing a full-scale revival of a play by Charles Ludlam in New York City. The Ridiculous Theatrical Company was one of the most profoundly influential queer theater companies of the last half-century and Ludlam was the playwright, leading actor and driving force behind that Greenwich Village institution.

But there is something else that makes this a really authentic wonder. Ludlam wrote this two-hander for himself and his lover Everett Quinton, as an expression of their love for the theatre, and each other. Quinton, who continued running the RTC for ten years after Ludlam passed, is directing this production, filling it with truly “Ridiculous”detail, as well as a surprising amount of warmth and romanticism.

Irma Vep is, above all, a tour de force for two actors who have to do insane amounts of costume and character changes, some of which are nearly instantaneous. Robert Sella and Arnie Burton are ideally suited for this show, with technique to spare, and a willingness to go to the very limits of camp without ever leaving their character behind.

I’ve directed Everett as an actor on two separate occasions, and came away from both experiences learning so much from him about the making of theatre, Ridiculous and otherwise. So I am not at all surprised that a Ludlam classic directed by him (with two sensational actors) is easily one of the best shows in town, certainly the funniest. Highly, highly recommended – this is truly essential theatregoing.

For tickets, click here.