Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Tell-Tale (review)

1998; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 50; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/tj.1998.0050

1086-332X

Richard Niles,

Folklore, Mythology, and Literature Studies

Reviewed by: Tell-tale Richard Niles Tell-tale. By Erik Jackson. Theatre Couture. Performance Space 122, New York City. 14 June 1997. Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Jackie Beat, Mario Diaz, and Sherry Vine in Theatre Couture of New York’s production of Erik Jackson’s Tell-Tale, directed by Joshua Rosenzweig. Performance Space 122. Photo: Aaron Cobbett. Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 2. Jackie Beat, Mario Diaz, and Sherry Vine in Theatre Couture of New York’s production of Erik Jackson’s Tell-Tale, directed by Joshua Rosenzweig. Performance Space 122. Photo: Aaron Cobbett. Drag theatre is alive and well in New York City, as demonstrated by Tell-Tale, Theatre Couture’s current offering at Performance Space 122. Under the artistic direction of performer Sherry Vine (a.k.a. Keith Levy), Theatre Couture has just celebrated its fifth anniversary with this camp treatment of film noir conventions. Previous efforts, all featuring Sherry Vine and female drag performance, have included The Bad Weed ‘73, e.s.p.-eyes of a supermodel psychic, The Final Feast of Lucrezia Borgia, Charlie, and Kitty Killer! The last two also originated at P.S. 122. Tell-Tale’s convoluted plot concerns wealthy, best-selling author Lenore Usher (Sherry Vine), an agoraphobic divorcee nursing her many neuroses in a plush Manhattan apartment. Her sinister housekeeper, Cora Tripetta (drag artist Jackie Beat) is having an affair with Lenore’s ex-husband and plans to kill her and run off with her money. The ensemble is rounded off with Mario Diaz, who plays all the men. As the story develops, the characters become involved in nefarious schemes, double-crosses, triple-crosses, poisonings, and body dismemberments. By the final curtain, there are several dead bodies, including a pet raven named “Poe,” with a nod to Edgar Allan and The Tell-Tale Heart. But playwright Erik Jackson’s script shows more affinity to the frenzied melodrama of Jacqueline Susann’s Valley of the Dolls than the Gothic ambience of Poe’s short stories. And while the text contains some witty dialogue and parodic treatment of grade B Hollywood films, it is in the performance and production values that Tell-Tale creates some truly remarkable impressions. The company’s resident designers, Kevin Adams (sets and lighting), Marc Happel (costumes), and Basil Twist (puppeteer and visual effects), have [End Page 270] created a wonderful physical environment to showcase actors Vine, Beat, and Diaz. The all-white, antiseptic, stage space contains a raised rectangular box, upstage center, that serves as a table, sofa, and onstage storage area. Initially, the design doesn’t seem compatible with the outrageous posturing and heightened delivery of drag performance. But the absence of set pieces and color unexpectedly accentuates the camp elements of the production: Vine and Beat’s extravagant make-up and wigs, Happel’s costumes that deliciously spoof Hollywood glamour, and most noticeably, Basil Twist’s puppets and visual gimmicks, which raise cheap theatrics to a fine art. Past Theatre Couture productions have featured Basil Twist’s puppets. Most recently, his “cat” almost stole Kitty Killer! from Sherry Vine, the only human performer. Tell-Tale similarly features “Poe,” the puppet raven that slyly comments on the action and responds to the human actors. But Twist’s most inventive constructions are a series of hilarious special effects. During a gruesome murder sequence, Lenore Usher carves a delivery boy up with a meat cleaver. When Diaz, as the victim, falls behind the rectangular box, Usher furiously hacks away at the now unseen body and, almost immediately, pulls out various limbs made of foam and painted to look like the actor’s hands, feet, and torso, dressed with matching costume elements and splattered with stage blood. Another example of such cheap theatrics occurs during the second act, when after another murder Vine sings a rendition of Stephen Sondheim’s Losing My Mind, accompanied by various body parts (more carved foam), which scamper across the stage and up the walls. As the song reaches its climax, a demented Busby Berkeley chorus line of severed hands and arms backs up Vine, swaying in rhythm to the music. But although the designers deserve much...