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| The hit comedy High School Hellcats in Heels, written by yours truly, is available for professional/amateur productions; visit my Play(wrights) Pen for more information. |
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Kitten with a Quip: High School Hellcats bare their claws at Pocket. By Elaine Liner / Excerpted from Dallas Observer 8/6/03 ©2003 If the comedy High School Hellcats in Heels were ice cream, it would be cherry bubble gum with licorice chips. If it were a sweater, it would be fuzzy pink angora over a pointy D-cup. And if it really were a B-movie from the 1950s, it would star Mamie Van Doren, Russ Tamblyn and Terry Moore...High School Hellcats is bubbly comedy shot through with dark jabs at midcentury good-girl-gone-bad movies. With heavy scoops of the same twisted wickedness of John Waters' Crybaby and Hairspray, the script by Dallas writer Andi Allen offers an intelligent, deliciously bitter take on the hypocritical moral codes of the Beaver Cleaver era. ...Director Lisa Cotie has put together an attractive, funny cast of nine actors who really get into their kooky roles and keep the comedy popping. What a nice surprise to see good, well-rehearsed, if very big, comedic acting happening on the stage at the Pocket...If only the Pocket offered more plays as bright and original as Hellcats...Allen's script teems with references not just to bad B-movies such as High School Confidential, but to glossy Hollywood flicks like Bye, Bye Birdie and Picnic that were quaint even by '50s standards. Characters toss off pop-culture quickies about Lumpy Rutherford, Dobie Gillis, Hazel, Ed Wood and the Big Bopper. Maybe the actors are too young to get all the jokes without footnotes, but we boomers dig 'em the most. High School Hellcats unreels the downfall of a trio of teen hellions in 1957. Like the tough-talking babes in Waters' movies, slutty girl-gang members Madge (Trista Wyly, snarling like Ann Blyth in Mildred Pierce) and Arlene (Jennifer Seiley) dangle Viceroys from their glossy lips and spike their Cokes with hooch. They teeter around on black patent, six-inch spank-me pumps and say things like, "I'm young and wild and wearing heels!" Into the Hellcats' gang comes willing victim Millie Martin (Jocelyn Everett), a pretty but lonely kitten in a pleated skirt whose parents (Marci Fermier, Greg Pugh) withhold love but heap on material gifts. "There are starving children in China who don't have convertibles," says the Donna Reed-y mom when Millie complains of feeling neglected. The Hellcats, see, need Millie's new wheels as the getaway car for their string of gas station robberies and muggings. These chicks are trouble with ponytails. Before long, they'll have Millie whacking a Fuller Brush man with a hog-bristle hairbrush and stripping another teen queen of her new sweater just for the thrill of it. And, as Madge likes to say, "It's the thrill that'll kill ya, kid!" (Madge pops every line as if it's punctuated with an exclamation point.)...Think of High School Hellcats in Heels as the Gidget movie B-movie titan Roger Corman might have made, the one where Gidget gets drunk and knocked up by a greaser. John Waters would be so proud. Against All Odds: 2003's theater winners gambled on edgy themes, took risks on new talent, new material By Elaine Liner / Excerpted from Dallas Observer 1/8/04 ©2004 Andi Allen, another Dallas writer and director, let the Pocket snag its funniest show of the year with her High School Hellcats in Heels, a spoof of '50s B-movies... 'Hellcats' has sharp claws: Decked-out cast digs in, achieves B-movie bliss at Pocket Sandwich By Tom Sime / Excerpted from Dallas Morning News 7/22/2003 ©2003 High School Hellcats in Heels is a cut above. Andi Allen's script is utterly - and intentionally - ridiculous, but notable director Lisa Cotie gives the silliness a sculpted precision that lets artistry coexist with buffoonery...The show's mannered 1950's B-movie acting is consistent throughout, fostering an atmosphere of giddy abandon that's nonetheless strictly choreographed...The cast is capably headed by a trio of rowdies: Trista Wyly as lead baddie Madge, whose manner is somewhere between Eartha Kitt and Tonya Harding; Jennifer Seiley as the voluptuous, squeaky-voiced sidekick Arlene; and Jocelyn Everett as suburban straight-A student Millie, who's driven to the Hellcats by the neglect of her busy, busy parents, played by Greg Pugh and Marci Fermier. Seeking attention, poor Millie trades in her saddle shoes for stilettos and jilts her letter-jacketed boyfriend Conrad (Matthew Sikes). She and the Hellcats go on an armed-robbery spree, arousing the interest of Detective Ted Wood, played with relish by Tim Demsky. Along with lots of sexy sweaters, costumer Jane Goodman presents an ingenious solution to the ever-pressing problem of car chases onstage. While the Hellcats sit in a traditional cardboard mock-up, Mr. Demsky actually wears a car costume around his midsection to pursue them. The rig even has working headlights. It's a great sight gag, and it's too bad the producers of the musical Sunset Boulevard didn't see it in time... Purrrr-fect : Talented cast is up to scratch in rebels-with-claws parody at Pocket Sandwich By Richard Ross / Excerpted from Dallas Voice 7/25/2003 ©2003 Performing a parody makes heavy demands on actors. They can easily find themselves going over the top...Fortunately the disciplined and strong cast members at the Pocket Sandwich Theatre avoid such pitfalls...Under Lisa Cotie's steady direction, the pseudo-serious tone required by a spoof remains consistent, the actors convincingly pretend they are taking the nonsense seriously and the compulsory exaggeration stays in check. Inspired (if that's the appropriate word) by teenage exploitation movies from the 1950s, Andi Allen's play follows the escapades of a girl gang and explores the dreadful consequences of what was once called “juvenile delinquency.” ...Allen must have watched lots of those old movies, because her script hits the mark exactly... Trista Wyly as the gang leader Madge and Jennifer Seiley as her faithful sidekick Arlene inject their one-dimensional characters with a potent mixture of sexiness and meanness...Jocelyn Everett as Millie ably discharges sweetness in excess, but after her conversion she develops the kind of behavior fitting to a full-fledged hellcat - and does so with subtlety. On second thought, “subtlety” should probably never be used in talking about this theatrical form. It definitely does not apply to Tim Demsky's detective Ted Wood, who effectively embodies every private-eye cliché imaginable. In the same manner, Virgil Optic's podiatrist [Daniel R. States], who runs the emergency ward, sends up the typical movie doctor with a delightful twist. Their turns together are priceless when they meet in the course of Detective Wood's pursuit of the hellcats and the good doctor's treatment of their victims... As sad little Millie's indulgent but neglectful mother and father, Marci Fermier and Greg Pugh re-create to perfection Hollywood's idea of what traditional parents in the 1950s are supposed to look and act like. Matthew Sikes, in his letterman's sweater, plays Millie's dumped boyfriend Conrad with the suitable humility and priggishness of someone who wants to be the football team's water-boy and who tries to save Millie from a life of crime and depravity. Speaking of Conrad's sweater, designer Jane Goodman's costumes capture the era flawlessly... [Set Designer Rodney] Dobbs and lighting designer Mandy Welch outdid themselves inventing the car chase, a scene that must be seen to be appreciated... |