Hooray for Charles Busch! He’s done it so many times before, and now he’s done it again just about as well as he ever has. The latest Busch-whacking delight is The Confession of Lily Dare, another of his satirical treatments of 1930s-ish-1950s-ish chicklet flicks. They’re the ones that apparently stopped him in his growing-up tracks and supplied him with role models in whose shoes he thought it would be fun to stride, totter, gambol, strut, retreat, preside, pose and whatever else he could dream up to do.
A program note claims the instigators for The Confession of Lily Dare are movies like The Sin of Madelon Claudet (1931), Frisco Jenny (1932), and Madame X (1929). You can bet a dollar and be a winner that Busch doesn’t expect too many prospective spectators to be familiar with these obscurities, certainly not as familiar with them as he is.
What he knows is that the melodramatic saga he’s unfolding is sufficiently self-explanatory and that what he’s going to do with it will be amusing in its own right. As he indulges in the free-form spoofing—“wallows” is probably too gooey a word for him—others will simply enjoy the ride. And if they pick up on other celluloid influences, all the better—unforgettables such as Stella Dallas (1925, 1937) with its self-sacrificing mother element. (Who out there recalls Barbara Stanwyck’s 1937 Stella watching her daughter’s swanky marriage through a rain-doused window?)
[Read Michael Sommers’ ★★ review here.]
Lily Dare’s story is narrated by longtime friends Emmy Lou (Nancy Anderson), a former prostie, and Mickey (Kendal Sparks), a former whorehouse ivory-tickler and handyman. They meet again at Lily’s fancy grave and are so happy to reunite that they instantly wrap each other in giddy reminiscences of their beloved employer.
They flash back to 1906 and the convent-schooled Lily arriving at the flashy cathouse run by her stern Aunt Rosalie (Jennifer Van Dyck). There, as she fosters aspirations to be a great singer, she receives a schooling of a different sort. That wising-up comes to an abrupt end when the underground rumbling worrying all of them at Aunt Rosalie’s place turns out to be the famous San Francisco earthquake and subsequent fire.
Needless to say, tribulation and trials dog Lily as—from 1906 right through to 1950—she tries out that singing career under the name La Mandalay; is sidetracked into a five-year jail stint, has daughter Louise given up for adoption by the loving Carletons (Christopher Borg, Van Dyck again); and partners with scion and scoundrel Blackie Lampert (Howard McGillin) in her own Aunt Rosalie-like establishment as someone calling herself Miss Treasure Jones.
And—let’s all catch our breath for a second—that’s it for act one. In act two Miss Treasure Jones hosts the now famous San Francisco bordello, as Emmy Lou and Mickey continue showing up. She fares magnificently until 1929 when she loses her establishment and is as Depression-depressed as everyone else. She’s back to wearing shabby housewife shmattes and singing the 1932 hit ”In a Shanty in Old Shanty Town” in speakeasies while Mickey accompanies her.
Things only speed further downhill until Lily and the fallen Blackie have a fatal last encounter. Throughout the bad—and much worse—times, Lily keeps pining for daughter Louise, now an international opera star who’s taken to wondering about her biological mother. Saying more than that there is a mother-daughter meeting would be endangering full Confession of Lily Dare enjoyment. Okay, maybe it’s fair to say the ultimate tete-a-tete is where Busch’s title comes to fruition.
In creating his send-ups over the past few decades, the love-to-gender-fudge Busch is capable of something not all satirists can achieve or, indeed, may care to achieve: At the same time as he’s skewering his beloved sources, he has the ability to make the ticket buyers pull for the characters. He does it in the writing and in the playing.
As written, Lily is such an ardent mother that Stella Dallas has nothing on her. Her past may be checkered, but her maternal devotion is unsullied. It would be a steel heart that couldn’t mix the yuks at Lily with compassion for her. It would be a granite mind that didn’t alternate the jollies with sympathizing at Lily’s undiluted fealty.
As Busch plays her and as longtime directing collaborator Carl Andress directs, every aspect of Lily’s comically three-dimensional character is maximized. Lily is endowed with a cargo of facets to wheel around as Busch slips in and out of a wide range of Jessica Jahn’s costumes and Katherine Carr’s wigs. Among other gifts, he’s a master (mistress?) of the sustained, laugh-getting sardonic look.
When it comes to the most appropriate adjective for Busch, “generous” immediately comes to mind. He’s not only generous to the women he chooses to impersonate in all their follies and foibles. He’s not only unfailingly generous to audiences. But he’s always generous to the actors with whom he surrounds himself. To be sure, he repeatedly indulges in star turns but never at the expense of the hard-working others.
On B. T. Whitehill’s set with its beaded-curtain-like frame—and with Kirk Bookman’s lighting and Bart Fasbender’s sound and outfitted by Rachel Townsend—the supporting players Borg, McGillin, Sparks, Van Dyck, and the ever-wonderful Anderson are handed any number of chances to have the stage to themselves. To a woman and man, they take full advantage. Since they all possess the chops called for, comic heights are constantly reached.
As usual with the witty Busch, the script is a Godiva-chocolates-boxful of clever lines. One of the best laughs is hurled by Aunt Rosalie, who early in the proceedings asks Emmy Lou and Mickey, “Must everyone have a personality?” Not a bad query, when you think about it, but for the moment, let’s all be grateful Charles Busch has that big-hearted personality of his.
The Confession of Lily Dare opened January 29, 2020, at the Cherry Lane Theatre and runs through March 5. Tickets and information: cherrylanetheatre.org
