Movies that are so bad that they're good, a familiar refrain, are actually a rare breed. Most really bad movies commit the worst sin of all. They're just boring. But the 1995 movie Showgirls became an instant archetype of the so-bad-so-good genre.
Reviewing the movie for The New York Times 21 years ago, Janet Maslin wrote that it is "an instant camp classic, a demonstration of how coarseness and uninvited laughter can have anti-aphrodisiac effects on even the smuttiest of stories." If the Times was not aroused in 1995, it was amused in 2013 when Showgirls! The Musical! opened in New York. And the reviewer had unrestrained praise for April Kidwell in the role of the good-girl-gone-pole-dancer that sank Elizabeth Berkley's career.
There is the good news that Showgirls! The Musical! will soon have its West Coast premiere, and the very good news that Kidwell will be reprising her role as the reluctant lap dancer Nomi Malone at the Victoria Theatre. "The coltish April Kidwell is a wonder," said the Times in its review. "Amid an exhausting onslaught of often obvious ribaldry, she is tireless, fearless, and performs circles around Elizabeth Berkley's portrayal in the movie." In the story musicalized by Bob and Tobly McSmith, Nomi is tormented by a vindictive rival named Cristal Connors who is a superstar stripper in Las Vegas. It will be the formidable Peaches Christ who will co-star as Nomi's nemesis in the SF staging.
Peaches Christ Productions is teaming with the musical's New York presenters, MediumFace Productions, for the Aug. 10-20 run at the Victoria Theatre. For the past 18 years, Peaches Christ has hosted an annual screening of Showgirls with live pre-show entertainment. "This show is an exciting new challenge for our production company," Peaches says of its foray into a full-length show. "I'm confident we're going to create something that doesn't suck."
Peaches Christ, also known as Joshua Granell, is directing the local production as well as co-starring in it. Along with Kidwell, another original New York cast member, Marcus Desion, will be reprising his roll as Nomi's best girlfriend. Those who purchase a large popcorn at the concession stand will be entitled to a personalized lap dance by one of Peaches' "dude-girls," and tips from the free lap dances will be donated to The Shanti Project. Ticket information is available at peacheschrist.com.
Summer awakening
Kate Chopin was a literary critics' darling in the late 19th century, and as her novel The Awakening was announced for publication, they expected to read more of her descriptive language, colorful characters, and regional portraits of Louisiana Creole life. Instead she gave them a heroine who fights the chains of marriage in search of independence and sexual satisfaction. A few of the adjectives that greeted its arrival in bookstores in 1899 included morbid, poisonous, unholy, and diseased. Chopin never wrote again, and it was decades before The Awakening was recognized as the groundbreaking work it is.
The Breadbox, a theater in residence at the Exit Theatre, is offering a world-premiere stage adaptation of The Awakening. Written by Oren Stevens and developed with director Ariel Craft, it begins a three-week run at the Exit on July 29. Maria Marquis heads the cast as Edna Pontellier, married to a successful New Orleans businessman, who begins to reassess her familial duties with her desire for social freedoms after falling in love with the passionate young Robert during a family vacation. Back in New Orleans, the internal struggle continues with her longings for Robert, a brief affair with a notorious womanizer, and conflicting advice from two of her women friends.
A second play from a different theater company also begins performances the same weekend on another of the Exit's stages. People of Interest Theatre is presenting Bennett Fisher's Campo Maldito, a play previously seen at various theater festivals, including the Exit's own SF Fringe Fest, where it was awarded Best of Fringe in 2014. The original cast is back for this story of an SF tech startup whose hip CEO has hired a Santeria priest to purify the office. People of Interest describes the play as "a darkly comic fable about the cost of gentrification and the price you pay when you piss off the dead." Campo Maldito runs July 28-Aug. 13, and info on both plays is available at theexit.org.
Beware the woodpeckers
Custom Made Theatre is participating in the National New Play Network's "rolling world premiere" of Steve Yockey's The Thrust & the Woodpecker that begins performances on Aug. 4. Yockey's new play starts off with a familiar mother-son dynamic, as various tensions arise after the son is expelled from a prestigious university and returns to live with his mother in Northern California. It's when a mysterious woman arrives that the play veers into unexpected territories. Stacy Ross, Fontana Butterfield, and Adam Magill make up the cast of director Tracy Ward's production.
A rolling world premiere means that various theater companies can sign on to present their own stagings of the play while each maintains the enticing "world premiere" moniker. Several productions of Yockey's play have preceded Custom Made's, and the nature of the play's unexpected territories has been admirably withheld by theater critics in cities where it has already played.
Typical of this discretion is provided by the Dallas Voice, in a review that outlines the plot before abruptly stopping: "Saying much more would be to reveal too much of this brisk, brief, heart-racing psychological thriller that takes eerie twists and delves deep into the psyches of motherhood and revenge and obsession."
The Thrush and the Woodpecker will run through Aug. 20. Tickets are available at custommade.org.