DRESSING ROOM DIVAS
Carr’s Halsted Street Cabaret
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Check your egos at the door, Quincy Jones reportedly told the famous singers on his record “We Are the World.” Playwrights Sal Emmino and Dane Hall refrain from making such an impossible demand on the characters in their hilarious, raunchy camp comedy Dressing Room Divas. Rather, their celebrity heroines–Bette Midler, Elizabeth Taylor, Julie Andrews, Meryl Streep, and Joan Collins–flaunt their egos as widely and wildly as possible. Locked in a tiny dressing room as the hostages of an overendowed, publicity-seeking gunman, played by gay-theater reliable Darren Stephens, the five stars trade barbs about each other’s love lives and image problems, personal crises and professional disasters. Armed with sharp tongues, short tempers, and long memories, the ladies trash each other (and a host of other folks, from Madonna and Melanie Griffith to Heidi Fleiss and Helen Keller) with fiendishly funny delight while wallowing in the outsize eccentricities of their libidinous, tabloid-toned public personas. For these aren’t the real Bette and Meryl and Julie and Joan and Liz–whoever they are–but the ludicrous icons those women have become in a society that mocks celebrities as part of idolizing them.
CAMP KILLSPREE
Bailiwick Repertory
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Roger Lewin-Jennifer Girard Photo.
