With the canon of revivable Cockettes musicals fairly well exhausted, Thrillpeddlers is looking into a less hazy past for its eighth Theatre of the Ridiculous revival production. Club Inferno, a "glam rock musical" first staged in 2000, opens this week at the Thrillpeddlers' Hypnodrome home.
The first Ridiculous revival production featured Charles Busch's Theodora, She-Bitch of the Byzantium. That was in 2008, but the following year a new tradition was established when the Cockettes' Pearls Over Shanghai opened a limited run that extended to 22 months. Almost every year thereafter brought back another acid-washed Cockettes musical from the early 1970s, or at least some assemblage of the material that had been preserved from those shows.
Back in 2000, musician Peter Fogel, who composed the hard-rocking songs for Club Inferno, referenced the Cockettes while discussing the then-new show. "We're waving the drag flag that started with the Cockettes," he said. "Old-school drag is dead. We're saying look at these fabulous new queens."
The cast (queens and otherwise) is mostly new for the Thrillpedders' production, though two of the original cast members are back to help guide a new arrival through the Nine Circles of Hell that 14th-century poet Dante Alighieri wrote about in Divine Comedy. In Club Inferno, Dante becomes the name of a rock diva struck dead in a stage accident. Each level of hell that Dante must enter is populated with dead divas �" of recent vintage and otherwise �" who each represent a particular sin. Peggy L'eggs is playing the suddenly deceased Dante, a role originated in the 2000 cast by musical director Birdie-Bob Watt, who has moved over to the role of Hades ferryman Xaron.
Leigh Crow is the other original cast member, and she is returning to the roles of Mama Cass and Lucrezia Borgia. Also on hand are the poet Virgil (John Flaw), Cleopatra (Noah Haydon), and Judy Garland (Zelda Koznofski) �" and it is Garland who provides the musical epiphany that returns an enlightened Dante back into the world of the living.
Thrillpeddlers founder and producing director Russell Blackwood is staging Club Inferno, which was conceived and written by Kelly Kittell. Club Inferno runs through Aug. 8; ticket info at hypnodrome.org.
Streetcar-blamed desire
The FDA looks ready to approve a new pill called a Viagra for women. But maybe all you really need is a jolly hour on the trolley to let loose your libido instead. With a speed now only found with trending topics on the Internet, a San Francisco 1970 news story about sex and transit went viral on newsprint. And the subject of that story is at the heart of The Cable Car Nymphomaniac, a new locally grown musical running through June 28 at the Eureka Theatre.
This is the second run for the FOGG Theatre production, first staged earlier this year at Z Space. With songs by Tony Asaro and written by Kirsten Guenther, Cable Car Nymphomaniac recalls the 1970 trial pitting a former dance instructor against San Francisco's transit system. Gloria Sykes claimed that a head injury sustained six years before in a cable car accident turned her into a nymphomaniac. Her lawyer claimed his client had had intercourse with more than 100 men in the last year alone. The jury ordered the city to pay out $50,000 for her suffering.
In the musical retelling, directed and choreographed by Tony Berliner, Gloria and her trial become a catalyst for explorations of female sexuality, with the repressed wife of Gloria's attorney pushing the story. The musical's creators dug up old newspaper stories and were able to interview original attorneys and courtroom observers as part of their research. Despite the campy title and its billing as "a racy and uproarious new musical," the show also claims a feminist bent.
"The fun part of this show is seeing how all the different groups portray the main character," Asaro said in an interview prior to the first production. "She's either a Marilyn coquette, a Janis Joplin heathen, or Sylvia Plath, depending on who is commenting. This story is all about vilifying women for being sexual, something that we're very much still doing today."
Ticket information is available at foggtheatre.org.
Broadway babies
A Tony-winning veteran and a rising Broadway star each have engagements on tap at Feinstein's at the Nikko. Faith Prince is due first, bringing her Have a Little Faith cabaret show to town on June 19 & 20. It's described as a "smorgasbord" of past, present, and future Prince songs and stories. Prince won her Tony in the 1992 revival of Guys and Dolls, and has since been back on Broadway in revivals of The King and I, Little Me, Bells Are Ringing, and Annie. She also got the only good reviews in the otherwise notorious Nick & Nora.
For Jerrod Spector, it's a return to San Francisco, where he created the role of songwriter Barry Mann in Beautiful: The Carole King Musical in 2013. When the show moved to Broadway, his performance earned him a Tony nomination. He was previously seen in San Francisco and on Broadway as Frankie Valli in Jersey Boys, and his performances on June 25 & 26 trace the Valli sound over generations, starting with Enrico Caruso and moving to Little Richard, the Beach Boys, Paul McCartney, Queen, Billy Joel, and Bruno Mars. Titled A Little Help from My Friends, the show features a full band and backup singers.
Go to hotelnikkosf.com/feinsteins for more information.