Dan Myers
Edric Johnson (left) as Star Cat and Andi Joyner as Chicklet.
Hey Madison: Wouldn’t you love to escape to someplace warm and sunny, where you can catch a gnarly wave? Or perhaps you prefer to lie on a blanket beneath a palm tree hung with glowing coconuts?
StageQ’s Psycho Beach Party, running through Feb. 27 at the Bartell Theatre, offers that kind of kitschy vacation. The show, written by playwright and drag performer Charles Busch, is more a passport to a camp ’60s beach party than your standard issue Great American Play. The second you walk in the door, an usher drapes you in a plastic lei, and you’re seated before a coastal scene straight out of Where’s the Boys Are. Think tiki shacks and parquet sand floors, and a girl’s bedroom reminiscent of The Brady Bunch.
But Psycho Beach Party is no episode of the milquetoast Bradys. Busch loves pastiche and genre, and the play is mashup of Gidget meets Sybil, surfer girl meets psychopath. Young Chicklet (Andi Joyner) longs to catch a wave, clamoring to learn from stoner Kanaka (played like a shaggy-haired Moondoggie by Noah Koebe). Along the way, she meets closeted gay surfers, a loud-mouthed philosophizing best friend, and Star Cat (Edric Johnson, looking like Frankie Avalon in a bad black wig). If this band of beach bums isn’t enough, starlet Bettina Barnes shows up, played in drag by Donnovan Moen. Chicklet’s crazy eyed mom, Mrs. Forrest (Terry Christopher) stalks the background. A suburban mother hasn’t been this dark and dangerous since Kathleen Turner’s knife-wielding turn in Serial Mom.
Psycho Beach Party goes all the way to blue at times, with all its nipple tweaking and pinching of privates — and yes, at one point, there is a ball gag. (Be forewarned if you’re buying a ticket to revisit Annette Funicello in her heyday.) Still, I was a little surprised the show didn’t offer more gender play and reverse casting. In the original 1987 production, Charles Busch starred as Chicklet, and without this central “female” character done in drag some of the jokes — and delicious irony — fall flat as a beach ball at the end of summer.
But if you’re looking for a trip back in time to a much trippier time, I highly recommend getting lei’d at Psycho Beach Party.
