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| Legends! |
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Drag is oh-so-fun in Uptown Players' 'Legends' By Joy Tipping / Excerpted from The Dallas Morning News 10/5/2008 ©2008 No higher praise can I bestow on Uptown Players' Legends than to say it's the most fun I've had in a theater this year. The deliciously silly B.J. Cleveland and Coy Covington portray aging movie queens Sylvia Glenn and Leatrice Monsée, respectively. The Hollywood rivals, who've long had a famously festering feud, are brought together in their "women of a certain age" dotage by a slick producer, Martin Klemmer (Chris Dover). Both women are experiencing financial woes, but neither is about to let the other one know it. Cleveland, looking a bit like older Judy and sounding something like Carol Channing, makes one of the funniest entrances I've ever witnessed. Interesting note: The original Legends starred Mary Martin and Ms. Channing, and actually had its premiere in Dallas in 1986. Twenty years later, it toured with Dynasty rivals Linda Evans and Joan Collins. But watching it at Uptown, it seems almost to have been made to be done in drag. Which brings me back to Cleveland: He really works those high heels. Covington swoops in all angular bone structure and arched eyebrows and Lauren Bacall-esque icy blondeness. After the inevitable, wigs-a-flying brawl occurs, the two get high and cozy over marijuana-laced brownies, and discover that they're actually much more similar than either would like to admit. Natalie Wilson King, as the maid, Aretha, the show's token actual chick, holds her own with and at times outdoes Covington and Cleveland in the comedy arena. Mr. Dover comes into his own when his character gets a taste of those brownies and he loosens up with the ladies. Andi Allen has directed Legends at a lightning pace that actually makes one wish it were a little longer, and the updating of the script to include references to Britney Spears, Perez Hilton and Clay Aiken is just right. Lipstick on a Pig: Drag treatment turns Legends' saggy script into knockout comedy By Elaine Liner /Excerpted from The Dallas Observer 10/8/2008 ©2008 Until Uptown Players got their clever little mitts on it, Legends was one of the legendary flops of the American stage. Good thing Uptown Players decided to be bold about casting its production. Instead of dressing up some more dotty waxworks to play the divas, they have dudes. Really, really funny dudes: B.J. Cleveland as bawdy Sylvia Glenn (the Channing role) and Coy Covington as Leatrice Monsée, the Oscar-winning prude whose credits mirror Mary Martin's. Flouncing hither and thither in a sparkly evening gown (costumes by Suzi Cranford), Cleveland is a meatier Bette Midler, throwing outrageously hammy moves and killing the crowd with them. Covington can deftly time a glance, a grimace or a ground heel. The dialogue now serves as merely a loose framework for Covington and Cleveland, who invest in endless little bits of physical business that pay off as crack-up moments of low comedy. During the hash brownie sequence, a thing with a toothpick and a piece of sausage that the actors improvised in rehearsal with director Andi Allen builds into one of the show's longest laughs. They've slapped a hot mess into sharp comic focus, hiding the play's considerable flaws under riotously good performances. Legends! By Christopher Soden /Excerpted from EDGE Dallas 10/9/2008 ©2008 Raising silliness and toxicity to a fine art, Covington and Cleveland play aging B-Movie screen stars thrown together by the opportunity to work with Antonio Banderas in a new show. Natalie Wilson King shines as the housekeeper, Aretha. King is perfect as the friend who's always ready to help bail Sylvia out, but won't take shit from her or anybody else. Shane Beeson as the Policeman who appears in the second act balances the chemistry of the show as the star struck cop who gives the two divas a reality check nonetheless. D. Dean is combustible, redoubtable and extra-extra yummy as the exotic dancer and bearer of extremely glad tidings. Chris Dover turns in an exceptionally kinetic performance as Martin Klemmer. It can't be easy to nail the sort of zaniness required in the second act but Dover makes it crackle, buzz and pop. Director Andi Allen and cast have peppered the text with lots of gossipy, contemporary references to the current menagerie of celebrities and it's just so divinely wicked. |