BITCHY, BITCHY
If you like your camp served by the bucket, then this outlandish tour de farce is steaming with it. Imagine if you will one of those appalling movies from the 1990s in which a group of Mean Girls reign supreme and battle for the role of Top She-Devil in their school’s cheerleading squad. Now, imagine if—instead of young nubile ladies—you have all the characters being played by drag queens. Now, imagine further, that the drag queens aren’t really drag queens—they’re guys dressed in guy clothes playing women.
The gender flip-flopping results are at the very heart of playwright Sean Abley’s mostly delightful, if slight, quirk-fest. Although the play, frankly, outstays its welcome by about half an hour—and was marred on opening night by the fact that Abley’s staging hadn’t quite jelled as far as comic timing is concerned—it’s still boasts enough laughs to make for a delightful evening’s entertainment. One can only suspect that it would be even more delightful after several drinks before and during the show.
Local Los Angeles comedy icon Drew Droege plays alpha gal cheerleader Sindee, who, in her senior year is horrified when she doesn’t make Squad Leader, instead being relegated to being the team “alternate.” Worse, Sindee’s rightful cheer place has been usurped by perky bimbo sophomore Angelatina (Matt Valle), who is so endearingly darling the other cheer gals want to smite her. Vowing vengeance against the young upstart, Sindee gathers together her loyal cheer-underlings to do the girl harm—all with the kind hearted support of Sindee’s venomously hateful mom Charlene (Sam Pancake).
Admittedly, this is the stuff of a great Saturday Night Live skit, but which, expanded here into a full length play, occasionally feels as though it’s unable to sustain the premise and plot. Some judicious cutting might help; indeed, the piece frankly seems quite padded with scenes involving supporting characters who never entirely pull their own weight, dragging down the pacing. The concept of all these burly dudes mincing around in men’s clothes palls midway through; it’s never as funny as Abley thinks it is, really, since one can’t think of any gender specific reason why men couldn’t be snarky cheerleaders. And the elements of camp are ultimately rather reined in: There are murders, but (with the exception of one jokingly violent crime) the incidents of cruelty and malice all seem a tad lacking in edge.
That said, the cast is able to whip the frothy material to unexpected hilarious heights of offbeat ferocity. There’s almost nothing funnier than watching the bedraggled-looking, sneering Droege limning the dark inner soul of a blonde cheerleading beauty; the scenes in which he archly schemes with his mother, played by Pancake, are so cracklingly wicked they make the Witches in Macbeth look like rival cheerleaders. Michael Vaccaro, as one of Droege’s cheerleader sycophants drawn inescapably into a life of crime, delights as she evolves from whimpering bimbo to murderous maniac. Valle’s pitch-perfect twink newbie is a droll study in the type of exasperating naïveté that you want to squash. As Lila, the burly, chrome bumper-chewin’ cheerleading coach, James Jaeger steals his every scene. It’s just a pity that with all this comic talent on hand the material itself isn’t more compelling.
photos by Brandon Clark
Bitches
The Magnum Players
Acting Artists Theater
7313 Santa Monica Blvd. in West Hollywood
scheduled to end on November 2, 2014
for tickets, call (310) 822-8392 or visit Brown Paper Tickets