Like a gathering of cumulonimbus clouds, Angela Arden seems to make each entrance billowing in ever more chiffon. As Die Mommie Die! reaches its final scene, it takes an entire couch to accommodate her gown's overflow. It's one way to command a room, and perhaps, in Angela's case, one of the few remaining ways, as her days as a celebrity songbird are long past.
The wondrous gowns are credited to Mr. David, but it takes a diva to know how to work them. J. Conrad Frank has been plying the diva trade for some time in the guise of Countess Katya Smirnoff-Skyy, and with his sumptuously wicked performance as Angela Arden, he takes diva-hood to new heights. Charles Busch wrote the play as a vehicle for himself, and his canny performance can be seen in the movie version, but with no aspersions to Busch, Frank quickly makes us forget that anyone else has ever played the role.
New Conservatory Theatre Center has surrounded Angela in the bad-taste luxury she deserves in Kuo-Hao Lo's gilded interpretation of a late-1960s Hollywood home. But it's not exactly a home sweet home, as the family that occupies it is in a near-constant state of warfare. While her husband and daughter mock Angela's comeback plans (her son, on the other hand, likes to wear her gowns), she takes refuge in "tennis lessons" provided by a studly unemployed actor (who also finds time to hit a few balls in the direction of son and daughter).
Die Mommie Die! takes its inspiration from the movies that provided late-career exposure to the likes of Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Tallulah Bankhead, and Lana Turner, and their various screen personalities take their turns bubbling up in Frank's performance. The writing isn't always as sharp when Angela Arden isn't front and center, but as Busch's script goes its own merry way, director F. Allen Sawyer is adept at mining most of the comic tendrils.
Angela is married to an old-school movie producer, and it's a marriage she wishes to terminate in one way or another. Joe Wicht provides the appropriate crude bluster as Sol, who doesn't understand why the public no longer wants Biblical epics. Angela and Sol's daughter is a daddy's girl en extremis, but when Edith isn't purring to Papa, she's a proper harridan in Ali Haas' high-pitched performance. On the other hand, brother Lance is a delicate flower, and Devin S. O'Brien finds a comic subtlety in the role of this Mama's boy. Marie O'Donnell plays the housekeeper, given to odd pro-Nixon outbursts, in an appealing variation on the no-nonsense Thelma Ritter school of acting. Less successful in hooking into the Mommie mood is Justin Liszanckie, who comes across as starchy and flat as the household gigolo.
Even as Busch paints his play in broad strokes, it's clear that the director, the cast, and the designers have paid attention to details. There's no getting around the fact that Die Mommie Die! was tailored by the playwright to his own skills as a performer. Those are hard heels to fill, but J. Conrad Frank joyously and confidently launches us into his very own diva orbit.
Die Mommie Die! will run through Nov. 2 at New Conservatory Theatre Center. Tickets are $24-$45. Call 861-8972 or go to nctcsf.org.