When you've seen one fecal accident after a booty bump, you've seen them all. It's called "deja poo." In the cause of full disclosure, more a matter of social deprivation than rectitude, I thought anal ingestion of crystal meth was a plot gag created for Shit and Champagne. A post-show Google search on "booty bump" clearly places the term (and the methodology) in the contemporary vernacular, but I concluded my research before discovering if soiled trousers are a telltale side effect.
But they are most certainly in Shit and Champagne, D'arcy Drollinger's go-for-broke, in-your-face, damn-the-torpedoes comedy at Rebel Bar. "You're going to be burning rubber down the Hershey highway," a pusher promises a potential user/victim before getting his booty bumped. The description of the show so far suggests an ample taste for the tasteless, but the indelicacy is backed up by several explosive performances, technical finesse, and a knowing wink that invokes call-and-response with the audience.
Drollinger first presented Shit and Champagne in New York in 2006 before resuming residence in San Francisco, and it's not difficult to see why he was drawn to remount it here. He has written a show that provides him with a tailor-made role that he fills with tour-de-force skillful abandon. He plays Champagne Horowitz Jones Dickerson White, a stripper at a seedy club who becomes a vengeful dynamo when first her fiance is murdered, and then her adopted half-sister, a world-famous leg model, is fatally shot in the calves.
Shit and Champagne, dubbed a "whitesploitation" satire, takes its lead from such 1970s films as Coffy, Foxy Brown, and Cleopatra Jones, and it comes adorned with a nonstop name-that-tune soundtrack. Crisp sound and light cues by Michael Blythe, astoundingly quick changes in and out of Cindy Goldfield and Jessica Lansdown's costumes and Jason Rail's wigs, and slickly staged fight scenes staged by John Ficarra belie the seemingly carefree, groan-laden trajectory of the script directed by Drollinger and Laurie Bushman.
While Rotimi Agbabiaka and Alex Brown play stumblebum henchmen, Matthew Martin deliciously provides the main villainy as Dixie Stampede, a corporate mogul of Rockettes-style high kicks who controls a discount-priced prostitution empire with some booty bumping on the side. Nancy French is wonderfully droll as the terminally bored announcer of scenes, while Steven LeMay displays strong comedy skills in a trio of roles.
Let no prospective theatergoers be misled: a touch of class this ain't. But Shit and Champagne might just be the comedic bump that a booty needs now and then.
Shit and Champagne will run at Rebel Bar through Feb. 8. Tickets are $20-$25, available at shitandchampgne.eventbrite.com.