FROM THE MOMENT I saw the press kit for EasyBake, sporting suckers taped to a luscious graphic by Tim Sanders, I wanted to like it. How could I not cheer for a play that purported to explore the heretofore hidden link between fetishistically photographed vintage recipe cards and naked ladies at peep shows?
I carry in my wallet both a Chicken Aspic Loaf recipe card and a “Pocket Pussy Photo” that I got out of a vending machine in the men’s room of a truck stop, so I obviously enjoy the cognitive dissonance that juxtaposition induces. Stretch the metaphor to include a domestic brainwashing tool for hapless female toddlers–the Easy-Bake Oven that baked tiny cakes with a light bulb–and I’m writhing in anticipation.
When I ambled into the Speakeasy, I was immediately charmed by playwright Wesley Middleton, attired in a flapperish getup. “The best thing about doing this is that I have an excuse to play dress-up everyday,” she said with a little smile, as if to imply that her work at the Lusty Lady requires her to dress down.
Not only was there a bowl of ripe cherries at the door, but also an empty dish thoughtfully labeled “pits.” These girls don’t miss a trick, I thought, stepping into the renovated Back Room. That dark and formidable space has never looked better. Set designers Josh Evans and Dana Perrault created a look both lurid and playful, with shimmering pink-and-silver backdrops and a turquoise checkered floor that I swear was lifted out of a “naughty waitress” layout from my favorite dog-eared copy of Hustler.
It wasn’t until I perused the program that I started to get nervous. Director Anita Montgomery hoped to “challenge a few stereotypes and shine a bright, hysterical light on the underbelly of mainstream white America and our puritanical obsession with and denial of our bodies.” Uh-oh. Please tell me this isn’t going to be one of those evenings in which women blame Barbie dolls and Cosmo magazine for the eating disorders they had their freshman year of college.
I perked up as the hilarious recipe cards Tuck-Away Beef Loaf and Hearty Hash Quickies were projected cleverly onto screens like peep show windows revealing glistening treats–but scant minutes into the show, my fears were made flesh. The four actresses, clad in nicely designed nude body stockings adorned with feathers, glitter, and fruit appliqués, tottered in high heels while reciting overheated prose that unappetizingly combined Lydia Lunch and Betty Crocker. For no reason I could make out, all was not well in peep show land, and the wafer-thin characters (lesbian dominatrix Vint, all-American girl Betty, exotic black girl Fondu, and kewpie doll Wiggy) kept getting into hissy fits, which Montgomery has unfortunately allowed the actresses to illustrate with ever-escalating bouts of screeching.
The only real laughs of the evening came from Pauline Luppert as Vint, who managed to imbue her nonsensical dialogue with sexy, believable ferocity, and Raquel Rosen as Wiggy, whose huge eyes and airy delivery made being knocked up and stupid cartoonishly cute. Sadly, the other actresses couldn’t keep their heads above the torrent of jumbled word-associations pouring forth from their mouths. The most thankless role went to poor Michael McQuilken, a handsome lad with complicated sideburns, as a menacing character named Eggman who seduces the women by taking a snack out of a L’eggs hosiery egg and devouring it. Outside of a John Waters movie, nobody could make this work.
As a performer at a peep show, Middleton has access to admittedly rich material; but instead of telling a story we could care about, using dialogue and observations gleaned from her work, she has plunged into the Reading-Poetry-Aloud-From-My-Journal trap. It’s as if she’s trying to smear her peep show window with so many words that we simply cannot see through to her vulnerabilities.
Maybe she needs to wait a few years until she has enough distance from the experience of performing nude before she’ll be able to honestly reveal something of herself in her writing. Or maybe she should immediately restage the entire show at the peep show, and have the audience pump the 10-dollar ticket price into the quarter slots. It would mercifully cut the running time to about 10 minutes–and it would give the audience a real glimpse at the naked truth behind the peep show glass.