Island City Stage founding artistic director Andy Rogow always wanted to do a play by the legendary Charles Busch. The New York-based playwright, who crafted an inimitable style of theatrical drag, stars in plays that he writes for himself portraying over-the-top female divas who appear to be trapped in time in the golden age of Hollywood.
But how to find the right actor to play one of Busch's femme fatales? Rogow's wish to produce a Busch play came into fruition when his paths crossed with actor Kris Andersson, who called him up during COVID. Andersson, who, for nearly two decades has been touring his own one-person show "Dixie's Tupperware Party," wanted to create a second chapter for his character of Dixie Longate.
"I was doing my show for years and years, and during the pandemic, I wanted to do something to keep my work relevant." The actor, based in Fort Lauderdale, was requesting a rental of Rogow's Island City Stage in Wilton Manors to film his latest, "Dixie's Happy Hour."
He did tape the show, which had a successful virtual screening during COVID and also had a live run in 2020 at Island City Stage.
"After that, I was looking for a project to actually work on with Kris," says Rogow.
Fast-forward to the closing show of Island City Stage's 12th season. Andersson is stepping into Busch's character in "Die, Mommie, Die," as Angela Arden, a fading Hollywood cabaret singer who plots to kill her husband to be with her younger lover.
"Die, Mommie, Die!" opens on Thursday, Aug. 22 at the Wilton Manors theater and runs through Sunday, Sept. 22.
It's a send up and a tribute to 1960s melodramas that became known as Grande Dame Guignol cinema, sometimes nicknamed "hagsploitation" and "hag horror" flicks. The genre kicked off with 1962's "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?" starring real-life archnemesis and grand dames Joan Crawford and Bette Davis. They were two of many silver screen stars who signed on for a melodramatic type of horror film in an effort to boost their fading careers.
"I think our audiences will relate to the movies of the 1960s that starred Crawford, Davis, Susan Hayward. It was when these aging divas were basically doing melodramatic soap operas but still playing the 1940s acting style that was overly dramatized," says Rogow, who is directing "Die, Mommie, Die."
It's a few weeks before opening night and Rogow is getting ready for rehearsal as he eats a take-out dinner from a white Styrofoam container of Pollo Tropical chicken and rice and beans. He's interrupted frequently by set designers, prop masters, and stagehands who want to ask about the placement of a rug on the floor or flowers on a table of the oh, so, Hollywood estate-styled set. It is the living room of Angela Arden's L.A. home, drenched in glamour of old Hollywood, the couch and chairs upholstered in a French-lime green.
"It was very important to me that the set sort of made its own comic statement. I wanted to make sure that when audiences look at the set, they know it's a comedy," says Rogow. When asked if that is part of his directorial stamp that he's putting on the show, he agrees. "I definitely think the way it looks visually is what I am putting into it for sure."
Rogow says it's part of the whole look and feel of the show, which he describes as "really laying into the style – playing it a little more satiric." However, both the Andersson and Rogow agree it's a balancing act to make sure Arden comes off the way Busch intended.
"The character is born of Charles Busch. I don't think of it actually as an actor playing it in drag. It's not about doing drag. It is just that a male is taking on this female character. [The playwright] was obsessed with these movies as a kid, and he was just able to absorb who these women were. So, although he was satirizing them, he still knew exactly who they were and could play them as they were. That's why I realized that I had the right person for the role in Kris. You can't just hire a drag queen because they will make it a drag show."
Rogow says what makes the play so different is that the audience knows it is a man, but the way it is written, the other characters are relating to Angela Arden as a woman. "Then there are these sexual innuendos and relationships that make it just a little funnier that it is a man."
Andersson says playing Arden is "an easy hill to climb for me. I've done drag for so many years as Dixie. I'm not saying that it's not a challenge to do the role." He's also enjoying not just being alone on stage, as he's done with his one-person show. "I kind of forgot how fun it was to work with a cast and a director because I haven't done it in so many years."
Veteran South Florida actress Elizabeth Dimon plays one of the pivotal roles, Bible-verse spouting, whiskey-flask touting, Richard Nixon supporting maid Bootsie Carp, who has some secrets of her own.
Dimon says she was "a little nervous" when she was cast in "Die, Mommie, Die!."
"I was like, I haven't played this kind of role," she says, referring to the over-the-top melodrama that's called for in the script.”
And the reciting of the many Bible passages that are written for Bootsie? "Well, I was a Presbyterian preacher's kid," reveals Dimon.
"Yes, Bootsie has played her odds, but she's got the Lord on her side," says Dimon, whose character has a few surprises up her own sleeves.
Other characters are Arden's film producer husband Sol Sussman (played by Troy J. Stanley), tennis pro and Arden's young lover Tony Parker (played by Clay Cartland), daddy-loving daughter Edith (Susanna Ninomiya), and gay son Lance (Kevin Veloz) who shares a secret language with his mother.
Busch has said the plot was influenced by Sophocles' 5th century Greek tragedy, "Electra," where a woman and her lover kill her husband, then her children exact revenge.
"Yes, this is a Greek tragedy … unknown identities, children, and parents and their love-hate relationships, and the violence that those can engender. While the play is set in the 1960s, the story itself, is really kind of timeless," says Rogow.
WHAT: "Die, Mommie, Die!" by Charles Busch
WHERE: Island City Stage, 2304 North Dixie Highway, Wilton Manors
WHEN: 7 p.m., Thursday, 8 p.m., Friday and Saturday, 5 p.m. Sunday. Opens Thursday Aug. 22 through Sunday, Sept. 22.
COST: $40, $45, $55 (Mimosa Sunday, Sept. 8)
INFORMATION: 954-928-9800 or islandcitystage.org
This story was produced by Broward Arts Journalism Alliance (BAJA), an independent journalism program of the Broward County Cultural Division. Visit ArtsCalendar.com for more stories about the arts in South Florida.
