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Drag scenes
Valley of the Dolls in Provincetown
BY SALLY CRAGIN

No need for bug juice, sunscreen, or sneakers for summer camp in Provincetown — all that’s required is a taste for cheese, especially this Tuesday, when a staged reading of Jason Cannon’s stage adaptation of the 1967 film Valley of the Dolls is presented as a benefit for the Provincetown Repertory Theatre. Participants in this send-up of the ’60s show-business soap opera based on the Jacqueline Susann novel include novelist Michael Cunningham (The Hours), original-cast member of The Full Monty Romain Fruge, and favorite P-town drag queens Ryan Landry, Penny Champagne, Randy Roberts, and Jeffrey T. Roberson (a/k/a Varla Jean Merman). Unlike some readings, this one won’t be just actors in chairs. Valley will include videos, music, and props. And as director James Lecesne explains, "You can’t expect people like Varla Jean and Randy not to show up in full drag."

For star Ryan Landry, who portrays Helen Lawson (played on screen by Susan Hayward), the reading is an unusual coda to a seminal childhood experience. He first saw the movie at age seven with his mother. She’d come home from her factory job at midnight and turn on the TV. He’d sneak out of bed and quietly watch with her. Landry explains, "I got the joy watching my mother. She was never in a good mood that often, so it was nice to see." He views the Provincetown Rep staging as "homage and tribute. The movie is high camp in its approach, and you do it to remind people how good the original is."

Jeffrey T. Roberson, whose Varla Jean Merman is the illegitimate daughter of Ethel Merman and Ernest Borgnine, grew up Southern Baptist and first saw the movie with a group of guys at college who adored camp cinema. "After they’d had a case of beer, they’d drag out the box of Salvation Army pantsuits," he laughs. Playing Sharon Tate’s role, that of "dumb actress" Jennifer North, Roberson relishes the wooden lines he gets to say — none of which, he notes drolly, are Academy Award material.

Director Lecesne has parsed the distinction between camp and art. "I think it’s a camp classic," he says of Valley, "and one thing that makes camp camp is that it’s so sincere yet, in funny ways, misguided. Someone was telling me the other day that all the actresses who were in the film thought they were going to be nominated for an Academy Award." He laughs. "You can see them trying so hard — they put their heart and soul in it. How many times in our lives have we thought we were doing a tremendously good job and that . . . wasn’t . . . true?"

Landry also has no illusions about Valley, despite his enormous affection for the work. "When you do things like this, they’re really audience pleasers — they’re not great works of art." Still, Lecesne thinks the production may help connect disparate elements of the Provincetown cultural scene. "I wanted to find something fun for everyone that would help other people find the theater and other performers find the space," he says, speaking of the new Provincetown Theater. "There are these entertainers who are here every year and are fantastic performers in their own right, so it was important the theater position itself so it’s not a hifalutin thing but someplace open to everyone. It’s all completely over the top, and directing something like this is choosing the right people to be in it and letting them all have fun." He pauses for maximum effect. "And making sure they show up."

Valley of the Dolls is presented this Tuesday, August 24, as a benefit reading by Provincetown Repertory Theatre at the Provincetown Theater, 238 Bradford Street in Provincetown. Tickets are $50, or $150 (includes post-performance dinner at Pepe’s Wharf); call (508) 487-9793, or visit www.ptowntix.com


Issue Date: August 20 - 26, 2004
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