New theater talent is often said to “burst on the scene.” For Charles Busch, however, the dreary cliché could be amended so that — in glorious drag — he bust on the scene. It was 1985 when his Vampire Lesbians of Sodom opened off-Broadway for a five-year run, changing him from, as he’s said, an office temp the night before opening to a leading theater talent the night after.
Busch is still busting and with no let-up on his reliably hilarious satires of women leading highly emotional lives. The newest is Ibsen’s Ghost in which he loosely and lavishly mines biography for what he terms “An Irresponsible Biographical Fantasy.” Not one to shy away from the outrageous — has he even been anything approaching shy? — he’s decided to appropriate actual facts and use them to dream up what might have happened to Henrik Ibsen’s widow, Suzannah Thoreson Ibsen, during a few hectic days of her colorful Stockholm life.
Entertaining guests in a living room where Henrik Ibsen peers from a portrait on the wall, Suzannah runs into trouble when Hanna Solberg (Jennifer Van Dyck) arrives to announce she’ll be writing a memoir about her association with the ground-breaking playwright. She plans to call the volume I, Nora.
[Read Steven Suskin’s ★★☆☆☆ review here.]
This piece of news agitates Suzannah no end. She regards herself as the model for the door-slammer of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House. She doesn’t stop there, either, positioning herself as the embodiment of all her late husband’s iconic women. As such, she regards Hanna Solberg as a dangerously interloping rival.
While that charged competition flames — Solberg showing up at one point in outlandish hunting garb (Gregory Gale the costumer) — abundant action transpires in Suzannah handsome home (Shoko Kambara the scenic designer).
The personage crisscrossing the playing area most often is Suzannah’s housemaid Gerda (Jen Cody), who has an unfortunate scoliosis condition. It’s a problem prompting Suzannah to ask, “Didn’t Dr. Esbjornsen diagnose that the curvature of your spine might lead to unwanted sensations in the pubis?” The line shouldn’t be particularly amusing, but it’s a line that Busch unfailingly has fun with.
Count on that brand of humor and be a winner throughout activity involving Magdalene Thoresen (Judy Kaye), Suzannah’s stepmother, a literary figure in her own write and therefore another competitor. Before marrying Ibsen, Suzannah wrote a single attention-getting volume but now claims she ceased a career to support Henrik.
Also stalking the premises is Wolf (Thomas Gibson), the son Ibsen had earlier in his life by a maid and — this is Busch possibly and “irresponsibly” conjecturing– now ripe for an affair with Suzannah as he looks through her house for a paternal memento. Saying he’s made the sea his career, Suzannah rejoins, “The glamour of the sea clings to you. Your eyes speak of unsettled waters…Or do you merely have an astigmatism?”
Ibsen’s publisher, George Elstad, played by Christopher Borg, also pops by for some tense exchanges, but Borg also gets to portray Rat Wife, a blowsy woman, once acclaimed actress Mitzi Møller, who has quit her pastime to go door to door ousting rodents. With her, hideous as she is (costumer Gale again having a ball), Busch elicits more of his giggles.
Busch stirs the pot for two acts, simmering a comic stew that may not be among his very best but isn’t far off. And as usual, he doesn’t simply concoct a vehicle for himself. That’s how smart Busch is. He generously hands his supporting actors spotlighted turns. He recognizes that forging a team is better than just placing living props around the stage. Busch’s long-term collaborating director Carl Andress makes the most of the ensemble.
Busch himself (herself in the circumstances?) remains a laff riot. His physicality is always magnetic. He employs his entire body throughout, but it could be that watching only his mouth as he speaks Suzannah’s heightened, hilariously arch language gives observers a strong account of his performing strengths. His lips widen, form squares, rectangles, purse, tighten, grip, snarl, roll so they resemble the wave at a stadium. It’s if they’re giving performances of their own.
And maybe it’s time to give thought to where Busch fits into the niche where he’s usually placed: Drag. Perhaps a new term is required, even overdue. If “drag” is considered men cross-dressing for show, that’s Busch, all right. But men often masquerading as women doesn’t necessarily include Busch. Unlike “drag queens,” he doesn’t dress in a greatly exaggerated guise — as no woman (or maybe few) would. He’s not sending up or aggrandizing while somehow mocking women. He’s acting a woman’s role in a play where he’s assuming a woman’s mannerisms — yes, possibly heightening them but going no further.
Charles Busch’s Suzannah Ibsen is a determined figure, a welcome addition to his tasty hors-d’oeuvres oeuvre.
Ibsen’s Ghost: An Irresponsible Biographical Fantasy opened March 14, 2024, at 59E59 and runs through April 14. Tickets and information: 59e59.org
