Viva Variety Goes for Show #48
BY SISTER DANA VAN IQUITY
22 September 2005
Make It So Productions presented the 48th edition of Viva Variety, the City's longest running gay and 'gay-friendly' variety show, at ODC Theatre. Hosted by Steve Murray, the new and improved Ed Sullivan, Viva Variety 48 featured an eclectic mix of the finest performers' from dance, performance arts, physical circus, comedy, theatre, and music. Every show is a charity event (so far 'VV's 'has given over $40,000 to artists and nonprofits), and this particular show was a benefit for the Native American AIDS Project (NAAP), providing culturally specific assistance and emotional support to people with HlV / AIDS.
From a pitch dark stage emerged the ever-sexy Diamond Daggers in a hot burlesque piece by Bjork and her quiet riot number, where dancers came right up into the audience to shush us during the quiet part and' then trotted back to the stage to go absolutely crazy in the riot part of the number, screaming aloud and leaping about: "You blow a fuse - zim boom!" and then just as suddenly return to a lovely ballet for the shushing' portion of "oh so peaceful...until you ring the bell-ding dong" and it's back to rockin' out in total abandon. For the final chorus, they turned into marionettes during the quiet and then broke from their strings and stripped off their costumes getting down to just skimpy bras and fringed g-strings. This is our favorite guerilla burlesque troop," commented producer/host Murray, and I heartily agree. "We never' know where they're gonna showup." Ya gotta love these delectable dykes!
Comedian Grace White came 'fresh from a gig in Reno, "Women Who Kick Comedy Butt." She did a routine about being an aging hippie chick. "You know you're getting old when you walk down the street, hear a horn honk, turn around and hear, 'Not YOU!'" "And my daughter heard my sad tale and commented, 'Oh Mom, that's really messed up. You keep your chins up!" She told of how she was seeing a young man and hew told her he really liked older woman. "Me too, I said. Well, it worked for Ellen, didn't it?"
Cabaret singer Bettina Devin, who can soon be seen in the movie version of Rent, sang some numbers from her new CD, Dangerous Type. "I was raised to be a lady, but here in San Francisco I've become a tramp," she confessed, then sang "The Lady is a Tramp", with ehr own lyrics including Mayor Newsom, Tom Ammiano, Cafe Flore, the Castro, and some wild scat singing.
From Velocity Circus we had Gregangelo and his ladies performing ancient Egyptian dances, including an amazing whirling dervish doing ecstatic Muslim dance in the form of a kind of two-layered dress that became a three dimensional spinning top as he spun around and around and around, faster and faster, the colors blending together as he whirled in a circle. The act truly defies description, so I won't even try to describe it. But if you ever get the chance to see a whirling dervish, don't pass it up!
And speaking of whirling dervishes, Will Franken spins his comedy act and gets so wound up, you never know where he will go. He uses a series of characters, different voices, different one-man skits-all linking together and somehow tying in. One moment he would do a public service announcement about public service announcements and then a third PSA on how to do PSAs about PSAs. The man is absolutely freaking insane-perhaps because he comes to us from New York's International Fringe Festival. Much of his -act was classic Dadaism. Some was pure psychotic breaks from reality. All of it was off the wall.
Jazz vocalist Sony Holland was recently a performer at the very successful Richmond/Ermet AIDS Foundation Help is on the Way fundraiser. She gave a delightful rendition of "Someone To Watch Over Me" with her own special phrasing. And then for something completely different, she sang a humorous composition her husband wrote for her. She introduced it saying, "This woman is in the theater business and is looking for a man-a difficult place to find a straight man." The piece was entitled "A Man in Manhattan" "With late night pals in theatrical locales, a guy who goes for gals is hard to find;" and "Someone with the perfect combination of rugged charm and sophistication. Dress me' up in leather, and lay me down in satin - there's just got to be a man, in Manhattan."
The evening closed with whistler extraordinaire Jason Victor Serinus, who was the whistling voice of Woodstock, Snoopy's best bird friend in the Peanuts cartoons on TV. He is affectionately known as the Pavarotti of Pucker.