What better way to top off a blockbuster 12th season than for Island City Stage (ICS) to gift us with Charles Busch’s notoriously famous and hilarious camp comedy DIE, MOMMIE, DIE! Playing now through September 22. The fabulously productive drag icon, and award-winning actor/director/novelist and cabaret performer, first played the leading role in his own killer melodrama comedy that skewers “Grande Dame Guignol” horror films of the 1960s (featuring aging stars like Bette Davis, Joan Crawford and Lana Turner) and Hollywood in general. Busch’s stage production proved so popular, it too was made into a film, with Busch starring and winning a Best Performance Award at the Sundance Film Festival.
But that was back in 2003. Island City Stage artistic director Andy Rogow (who also expertly directs this show) says he first avoided producing Charles Busch comedies because he “didn’t feel confident that we had an actor who could take on the leading lady roles that make his plays the hilarious showcases that they are. With Kris Andersson, however, we have found a star that will bring the bravura and comic chops that make ‘Die, Mommie, Die!’ sparkle.”
Boy does he ever! Many of you may recognize Kris Andersson’s alternate persona of Dixie Longate, creator and star of off-Broadway hit “Dixie’s Tupperware Party” that’s just wrapped up 16 years of international touring at the Kennedy Center. During the pandemic, you might have tuned in to “Dixie’s Happy Hour” which was filmed right here at Island City Stage and streamed to 26 arts centers around the country to help raise financial support during those dire times. (Sadly, the critical need for arts funding, especially given DeSantis’s recent arts veto from our state budget, is a never-ending story. ICS funded this show with a grant from the Warten Foundation, who’s listed as co-producer.)
So now you have an exclusive opportunity to see the incredibly versatile and dynamic Kris Andersson in the flesh star as Busch’s fading leading lady Angela Arden — with all of her self-involved passion, deviousness and outrageous lack of self-control (these appear to be family traits). But, most exemplary throughout, his spot-on comedic timing. Andersson’s supported by a Who’s Who roster of local celebrities. Critically acclaimed actors such as Clay Cartland, Elizabeth Dimon, Troy J. Stanley, Kevin Veloz … and one talented young newcomer — Susanna Ninomiya — who completely holds her own and will likely be hailed as a rising star of tomorrow.
I’ll get to more about the insanely dysfunctional Sussman/Arden household in a bit. But first I must rave about the glamorous, realistic stage decor that captures your attention as soon as you enter. And are instantly transported from black box theater to the spacious and elegantly appointed living room of a 1967 Beverly Hills mansion. A period fantasy in pink and green — complete with winding staircase, marble columns and floors, lush velvet seating, and double glass doors that open to a view of garden foliage. My hat goes off to scenic designer Robert F. Wolin and scenic construction by MNM Theatre Co./ JB Green & Jordan Armstrong, and Jim Morgan for sewing the curtains (yes, there’s even that custom touch).
To perfect the picture of this picture-perfect past, we enjoy a profuse display of 1960s attire of the rich and famous: mini-skirted daywear, crisp tennis outfits, an adorable short nightie (remember the “babydoll”?), and extravagant, gauzy-layered sleepwear confections … even a man’s silk pajama set with matching robe. But most impressive, there’s the ongoing feast for the eyes of fabulous evening gowns bodaciously swished about by Kris Andersson’s embodiment of proud has-been pop singer Angela Arden. For the thrill of this background fashion show we must thank busy local costume designer and Island City regular, W. Emil White.
Act 1 opens with a short video presentation under the year 1954. A rolling montage of front page news and magazine headlines spotlight musical star Angela Arden’s successes and then, increasingly, failures and embarrassing moments through the years till arriving at the play’s date of 1967. It’s a strikingly visual shorthand way of cluing us into the once-celebrated actress’s history and personal issues, thanks to projection design by Matthew Tippins.
Next we meet Bootsie (Elizabeth Dimon), the Sussman family’s long-serving (and self-serving) maid, who’s not all that secretly in love with her employer, movie mogul Sol Sussman (Troy J. Stanley). No relationships here are properly matched. For one, Bootsie is a fierce, Bible-verse-spouting Christian Republican enamored of her whiskey flask and Richard Nixon. After 25 years in the Sussman household, she proclaims, “I know all your secrets,” and will happily resort to blackmail if she doesn’t get her way.
And Sol, for all his business volatility and personal flaws (soon his life is threatened when his latest movie tanks and he can’t repay a huge loan from the mob), fancies himself a liberal Jew and is generous in his use of Yiddish aphorisms. From these character descriptions alone, you can expect plenty of acerbic one-liners and insider humor.
Even more cringey is Sol’s relationship with his and Angela’s daughter Edith (Susanna Ninomiya) who absolutely worships, and inappropriately expresses her love for, her father. Edith purposely flaunts skimpy nighties and dresses around her dad while referring to her mom, whom she hates, as “LA’s best-dressed whore.” When Angela brings flowers from the garden, and attempts to connect with her daughter, she’s rebuffed with: “You’ve never been a real mother to me.” To which Angela responds: “Seems I have a green thumb for everything except raising children.”
Angela does enjoy a special supportive relationship with her much-denigrated, somewhat slow “abnormal” son Lance (Kevin Veloz) whose father despises him for being gay. Lance unknowingly extracts revenge when during campus Vietnam protests, he sets fire to a gymnasium his dad funded to get him into college. He’s expelled from the university, nonetheless, for being “a bad influence on the faculty… a sexual magnate.” As he explains: “The dean said I instigated a homosexual orgy in the faculty lounge.”
Angela asks her far from secret lover, Lothario extraordinaire Tony (Clay Cartland) who poses as a tennis pro and ostensibly stops by for her tennis lesson: “When did it all go wrong?” Tony comes up with: “When your sister Barbara died.” (By the way, Sol may be the only Sussman family member who doesn’t lust for, and is encouraged by, ever hot-‘n-ready Tony!)
Tony’s observation about the death of Angela’s twin sister (which we soon learn is a taboo subject for Angela) says a lot. The full extent of which is revealed in insanely wild increments, only toward the end. For not only is “Die, Mommie, Die!” a crazy farcical send-up of a classic Hollywood horror genre, it’s a head-spinning mystery about what really happened in this family’s past and how it will affect them all going forward. I want you to be as shocked, thrilled and mystified as I was (in between all the insane bouts of laughter). So no spoilers here.
