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| THE FACTS OF LIFE: THE LOST EPISODE |
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Blair Bitch Project: Boys will be girls in The Facts of Life: The Lost Episode, a ribald triumph of low comedy and high production values by Elaine Liner 6/18/2008 ©2008 Staged by Uptown Players at Oak Lawn's Rose Room, the two-hour parody-with-music is done in full drag by five male actors who attack their roles with more comic ferocity than the young TV cast ever did. If the girls who originated these characters had been as attractive and comically gifted as the Uptown guys now playing them, they'd still have careers. Playwright Jamie Morris starts borrowing ideas from more than the old NBC sitcom. Blending Risky Business with Best Little Whorehouse, the Eastland four decide to turn tricks to fill the coffers. Act 2 opens with the girls hustling customers in and out of their dorm beds in a scene as raunchy and crisply staged as a good French farce. There's rarely a second of the Uptown Players' production that isn't gaspingly hilarious. Every character comes more than adequately quipped by Morris. Actor Paul J. Williams, waddling around under 10 pounds of red bouffant beehive, gives some masterful—or would this be mistressful?—line readings. He adopts the quavering delivery of Facts' character actress Charlotte Rae, staying just this side of over-the-top. The cast and designers of Facts of Life: The Lost Episode have triumphed by doing low comedy with high production values. This so easily could have been reduced to a campy skit that still would have been fun to watch. But director Andi Allen, costumer Suzi Cranford, wig and makeup master Coy Covington, and choreographer Linda Leonard have put the polish to every detail. When the girls and Mrs. Garrett launch into "Peekskill's got a whorehouse in it," they sing and dance all-out with layers of harmony and complicated steps. Every one of these sharp performances owes something to the self-conscious eccentricities of the television cast they're imitating. Williams' scarily accurate Mrs. Garrett is matched by Chris Robinson's scarily accurate Natalie, who laughs at everything she says (just like the TV Nat, Mindy Cohn). Kevin Moore's Jo takes on some of Nancy McKeon's swagger, but Moore doesn't even try to be feminine. He's a guy in a girl's school uniform—much the way McKeon played Jo. Cameron Kirkpatrick looks nothing like Kim Fields, but even on skates he manages to capture the original Tootie's flippy emotional instability. Chad Peterson super-sizes all the annoying affectations of the original Blair, Lisa Whelchel. The exaggerated hair-flipping and Lolita-esque posing become more than visual punch lines; they're comments on the ghastly, amateurish acting styles acceptable in the sitcoms of yore. In one of its later seasons, the show introduced a new character, Blair's cousin Geri, played by Geri Jewell, a stand-up comedian with cerebral palsy. The Lost Episode includes "Geri" in a bawdy cameo that so shocked the opening night audience, someone yelled "You're going to hell!" from the back of the house. Yes, they go there and back, and back again and again. Unclean! Unclean! Fact is, 'Life' is hilarious by Arnold Wayne Jones, The Dallas Voice 6/19/2008 ©2008 If there was anyone at the Rose Room on opening night of the TV spoof who didn't leave with a goofy grin plastered across his mug, if was only due to facial-muscle exhaustion occasioned during the previous 90 minutes. As chubby Natalie, Chris Robinson mashes up his nose and squints his eyes in the same self-deprecating fashion as Mindy Cohn and causes eerie laughter on its own, but when Blair inspects her private parts with a hand mirror — well, let's just say you didn't need to be a fan of the '80s sitcom to find it funny and revolting. "The Lost Episode" isn't really; it's entirely the product of [playwright] Jamie Morris' twisted mind. The entire cast has a blast. Chad Peterson turns dramatic hair-tossing into a contact sport. As Jo, Kevin Moore makes for a grim girl, all mullet and graceless, cartoonlike tomboyishness … which is exactly as he should be. Cameron Leighton Kirkpatrick makes Tootie a dervish on roller skates, twirling into a frenzy. The comedic fulcrum, though, is Paul J. Williams as Mrs. Garrett. Glancing at his charges disparagingly over half-glasses, his Parkinson's-like vocal tremor stretch out one-syllable words into choruses of clucking disapproval, Williams doesn't even need to say funny things — he just says things funny. Director Andi Allen and choreographer Linda Leonard have created a new kind of play for Uptown and the Rose Room: The cabaret comedy, an hysterically vulgar bit of meta-drag. Keep 'em coming, guys. |