Viva Variety Turns Five
BY SISTER DANA VAN IQUITY
11 March 2004
The show opened in the dark with eight women sleuths in trench coats holding flashlights, lurking about to a James Bond spy tune. When the stage lights came on, they threw off their coats and boogied around in scanty fringed bikinis to a "Sweet Charity" cocktail party number. Then as the theme from "Hawaii 5-0" played, they did the swim. These were the Diamond Daggers burlesque troupe, an all-lesbian dancing combo.
Steve Murray, host and creator of VV, looked quite dapper dressed in a faux ermine collared black shirt and gray pants. He brought out, back from the dead, a very special guest, Kathryn Hepburn in her Eleanor of Aquitaine from Lion in Winter garn, palsied head shaking away, holding up her biography, Me. This was the incomparable Matthew Martin doing one of his many flawless female impersonations. In her addled mind, she kept mistaking Murray for Spencer Tracy. She recited her lines from Stage Door, slightly changed: "The lesbians are in bloom; such a strange flower, suitable for any occasion." She finished with "You're my knight in shining armor, you old poop" speech from On Golden Pond and we could truly hear the loons, if you know what I mean.
Will Franken, a fast-paced comic who has been called a human television set, did a standup routine filled with an assortment of odd sound effects. He opened with the most demonic of growling noises followed by the tagline: "A message from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints." Then there was a normal phone call placed to a business that got progressively more obscene as various buttons were pushed to reach various automated voice mails. Next he was a rabid rightwing preacher giving a sermon: "If God had wanted man to put his peepee in another man's poopoo, He would have made a woman have a poopoo where her weewee hole is." Finally he was a judge at an inclusive quilt contest where one of the entrants made a quilt for remembering STDs and another made one celebrating homophobia. The latter complained, "I was born prejudiced and I think it is a shame and travesty that we had to do something gay like sew a quilt to show our cause." Wild stuff!
Jumping on the marriage wagon that night was the ever-present Peggy L'Eggs (played by Matthew Simmons). Murray stood in as minister and the music played while Peggy marched down the aisle, holding a potted plant, in her satin and lace wedding gown. When she got to the stage and no groom was to be seen, someone handed her a telegram from the missing groom, reminding her that the amended constitution forbade them from uniting. The jilted one drew out from her bodice a little mandolin to play and sing "So Lonesome I Could Die," while wedding guests knocked her in the head with tossed unopened bags of rice.
VV features not only drag queens but drag kings as well. Rusty Hips, 2003 Drag King winner and Mr. Trannyshack, made his third Viva appearance looking very hip-hop macho in his pencil-thin mustache and rapper threads. Murray warned us that Rusty had a predilection for older women, and he wasn't kidding. Out creaked an elderly granny in a walker, Camille Toe, wearing thick coke bottle eyeglasses and a gray wig. Mr. Hips rapped at Miss Toe with some sexy suggestive lyrics, offered Camille a joint, which she refused, but finally won her over with a tube of Ben Gay ointment. Rusty spun around on the floor in soime impressive break-dance moves including the worm, which flustered her so much she dropped her fanny-pack full of coupons. Then off they went for the May-December tryst.
The Diamond Daggers returned to do a scintillating interpretation of the Chicago theme song and All that Jazz, complete with the Bob Fosse choreography and shimmy-shakin', truckin' on down the line, doin' high kicks, and simply pulling the audience to their feet in a big standing, stomping ovation. One of the best cabaret performers in town, pianist Mike Greensill, returned to the Viva stage, unfortunately without his longtime partner, Wesla Whitfield, who was a little under the weather that night. So after he played a dynamite "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" on the piano, he brought up a singer who has stood in for Whitfield on several occasions, Shaynee Rainbolt, a terrific vocalist who has played the Plush Room many times. She sang the hell outta that Bette Midler hit, "Stuff Like That There" and finished with a dreamy "At Last."
VV has had ventriloquist acts before, but this one was a doozy. Dot Jones & Peanut was an unusual act with a tall, respectable church lady holding a live dummy (Betsy Salkind as a PeeWee Herman look-alike) that had a very foul mouth and kept embarrassing the devout woman with his frank language.
May 25 is the next Viva Variety, same time, same place, 8 p.m. at 762 Fulton Street @ Webster. For reservations, call 863-0741, ext. 2.