‘SOUND’ OF TITTERS AT ‘NORMAL’ THEATRE
Cabaret Review by Pat Morgenstern
In a production that might be obscene if it were not so clearly inept, the recently opened Normal Family Dinner Theatre has unintentionally shown Fairfax what Rogers and Hammerstein’s ‘Sound of Music’ would look like if it were performed by criminally insane prison inmates under the direction of the Marquis de Sade.
(That was a pull-quote that Neville would put at the top of his résumé for years to come.)
In the words of Susan Sontag, “Camp taste… relishes awkward intensities of character, finds success in certain passionate failures.” This failure might be considered a little too passionate, by some, but it is unquestionably entertaining, if for all the wrong reasons.
“ ‘Unquestionably Entertaining’ is what we’ll put on the posters,” said Peppy.
Director Neville Vanderlee (who also plays a screamingly funny Mother Abbess) seems to be exploiting the inexperience of his ‘actors’ to facilitate his own twisted prank. Maria, played by Peppy Normal, would be more appropriate covered with boiled eggs in a John Waters movie. One of the Von Trapp children looks as if she should be soliciting tourists in Times Square. Lalo Buarque’s Captain Von Trapp seems to have fallen prey to the alcoholism that has tarnished many a naval career—method acting? I doubt it.
“Who the hell is this ‘Pat Morgenstern'? I’m gonna cut his ears off!” shouted Peppy.” ‘Screamingly Funny’ is what we’ll put on the posters,” glowed Neville.
The sole redeeming element of the show was the charming “Sixteen Going on Seventeen” number, played by the poised and luminous Chantal Baumgarten (no stranger to the Marin stage—she was a favorite Clara in Marin Ballet’s ‘Nutcracker') and the wildly talented Roland Spring, whose name we will surely see in lights someday… just as soon as he gets out of this tawdry production.
On night number two, as everyone nervously prepared themselves for some unforeseen doom (there had been phone calls; a “meeting” was scheduled for that Monday with a group of parents—an ugly crackdown was anticipated), the cast was amazed and delighted to see that fifteen minutes before the box office opened, there was a thick queue so long it wrapped around the corner, composed primarily of gay men and college students, all carbonating with glee and anticipation. Several of the men were dressed like Peppy.
“It’s a smash hit!” exclaimed Peppy, unable to believe her eyes.
“You did this,” Neville lied, wrapping an arm around her shoulders.
Liza had an entirely different makeup scheme the second night—she put her hair into two tight braids, eschewed eye makeup entirely, and wore sensible shoes; she looked the part. Neville was disappointed. “No, no! Go back into the dressing room and do that fabulous Francesco Scavullo disco nightmare thing you did last night!” Liza sadly complied.
Neville quickly located all of the possible innuendi in the script and instructed his actors, as they prepared, to “punch ‘em up.” That night, lines that weren’t supposed to be funny had a new sleazy tinge to them:
Nun #1: “Maria is missing from the abbey again.”
Nun #2: “Have you checked the barn? You know how much she loves the animals.”
The Peppys in the audience made barnyard noises, baaaahing and oinking enthusiastically.
When Neville, as Herr Zeller the Nazi, came onstage with a codpiece twice as large as it had been the previous night, shaped like a giant erect fang, the parents in the audience who had any doubt whether or not to shut down the production were firmly convinced.
Lalo was furious to be, what he considered in his Latin mind, the laughingstock of the area homosexuals. After the intermission, he refused to come out of his dressing room.
Ned was dispatched to plead with him; he could hear Lalo angrily mumbling to himself as he knocked on the door.
When Lalo finally kicked the door open, Ned was hit by a rolling cumulus cloud of pot smoke; the smell of toasted skunk wafted into the audience and alarmed several parents who were intimately familiar with the aroma.
Lalo was stripped to the waist and had painted large, black, Uncle Fester—like circles around his eyes with a stick of greasepaint. He was staring hauntedly at himself in the dressing-room mirror and mashing a black, Manson Family X in the middle of his forehead. Ned was frightened.
“You have to get dressed and get onstage, Lalo, please,” he begged.
Hearing Lalo’s cue, Ned threw the captain’s jacket over Lalo’s shoulders and hung a pair of sunglasses on his face, concealing the blackened eyes but not the X. There was no time to button the jacket; he wrestled Lalo out of the dressing room. Ned noticed as he shoved Lalo onstage, where he lurched and staggered in his war paint like a dying Zulu, that there was a bullwhip in his back pocket (a gift Neville had received the previous night). Lalo glared at the audience and hollered a spit-drenched hail of Portuguese invective at them; some laughed nervously.
Forty minutes beforehand, behind the theatre in the backyard, Love had flourished. Misty-Dawn and Barren, who had been growing closer over the last three weeks, were making out with famished teen intensity, pawing at each other’s bodies in a spray of hormonal friction-sparks.
“Let’s go upstairs,” panted Barren.
“Where?” whispered the Mastodon.
“Peppy bedroom.” He smiled.
The wrongness of the idea felt vastly erotic. While the backstage was swirling with chaos, they snuck up the stairs and stole through the door to Peppy’s room. The waterbed and its poly-satin sheets stretched fantastically before them like the moonlit Nile.
“I think we bein’ watched,” giggled the Mastodon, referring to the dozens of staring wig-heads as she struggled out of her airtight pants.
During his rant, Lalo glimpsed Neville’s blurry black-and-white nun form creeping onstage from the wings.
“Bem chato, you faggo bidje mozsherfugge,” Lalo growled, shoving Peppy away from him. He grabbed the bullwhip, let out a fearsome battle cry, and began trying to crack it at Neville; the tail flapped around in harmless loops. Everyone watching made a mental note: the best weapon for a really fucked-up man to have is a bullwhip.
Neville’s brawny convent shuffled onstage, trying to gently corral Lalo like a spooked horse. Ike, unsure of what else to do, dimmed the other lights and bewildered Liza by suddenly illuminating her in a full spot. Liza gaped for a moment in starkest terror, thinking she might have forgotten a major cue. The bossa nova accompaniment for her High School of Performing Arts audition began to blare over the main speakers.
Oh God. This can’t be happening.
“Liza! DO IT!” Neville hissed in his loudest whisper, shielding himself behind the wide shoulders of Sister Margaretha.
In a daze, Liza walked to center stage. She took a deep breath, and unleashed her loudest, biggest, most vibrato-heavy voice…
CLI-I-I-I-IMB EV-ERY MOUNTAI-I-I-N FO-R-R-RD EV-ERY STREEEEEAM… FO-LLLLOW EV-ERY RAINBOOOOOW ‘TILLLYOU FIND YOUR DREEEEAM…
Her
