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enings Out

Carmen

by George Bizet

Ridiculous Theatrical Co.

New York City

Reviewed by Barry Daniels

In the Ridiculous Theatrical Company's new production, Carmen, George Bizet's tale of passion and death collides with disco in an esthetic that is closer to John Waters than to grand opera. The result is a generally amusing series of vignettes peppered with bad puns and a constantly changing parade of garish costumes.

This Carmen is set in the present in New Orleans and surrounding bayous. It opens with the hanging of a babyfaced sailor, Don Johnson, whose story is told in flashback. The cigarette factory of Merimee's novella is now Dick's Condom Factory. The women, played by men, are condom rollers who dish and dance during their Ho-Ho breaks. Carmen, a passionate gypsy, who stabs one of them during a cat fight, seduces Don Johnson when he is called to take her to prison. We follow her to prison and escape through the bayou where Johnson becomes inextricably linked to her life of crime. They hide out in The Dirty Nelly, a “cat house,” where Carmen ditches Johnson for a lesbian matador. Carmen's fate catches up with her outside the bull ring as we watch Johnson's final degradation.

The comic delights of the production are numerous. Carmen's first entrance, singing a camp version of the “Habanera,” is memorable. Everett Quinton's Carmen is a heartless vixen dressed in a black flounce skirt with red trim, a red bolero jacket, fishnet stockings and heels, with a tangled mountain of black curls done up with various gilt ornaments. This Carmen is a diva from hell and a drag queen to be reckoned with. My favorite line is in her first encounter with Don Johnson. As she takes his hand to kiss it, he draws back saying, “My hand is dirty,” to which she retorts, “My mouth is dirty!"

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Equally fine is Julia Dares' entrance in the whorehouse as the lesbian Torre Adore. To Bizet's "Toreador," she sings the joys of lesbian sex; she's "A toreador that bulls never gore." Dares is wearing a black and white cowhide slit skirt with matador jacket and hat, all trimmed with red spangles.

Beth Dodge Bass plays Lily Pastia, the Madam and "scourge of the bayou," with a gutsy lasciviousness and hardbitten greed. Cheryl Reeves is suitably sweet and naive as Micaela, Johnson's girlfriend, who tries to save him from Carmen's clutches. Lenny Sama, with his dark good looks and innocent baby face, doesn't have a chance against Carmen. He's so beautiful that when Carmen (Quinton) gives him up for a dyke, gay men know in their hearts she deserves her final end.

Larry McLeon, Michael van Meter, and Jimmy Szczepanek play a trio of drag roles in each of the different settings. They are the dicey condom rollers at the beginning, the streetwalkers in prison, Lily Pastia's daughters, and whores in the brothel, and, wearing black lace, are the chorus who view Carmen's death.

Three costume designers-Cory Lippiello, Romona Ponce and Toni Nanette Thompson-are credited with the designs. They've gone all out to produce hilarious and outrageous drag in the best Ridiculous tradition. K-Mart colors and cheap jewelry are topped by Zsamira Ronquillo's wigs.

No writer is credited in the program, and the script isn't quite up to the imagination of the designers and the talents of the cast. It is filled with good ideas that need to be pushed a little bit further over the top. The bad puns slow it down at times, and, except for the scene between Carmen and Johnson, the prison sequence is rather flat.

Carmen does have the gender confusion that is one of the Ridiculous Theatrical's trademarks. In it a cute boy falls hopelessly in love with a woman-played by a man in dragwho leaves him for a lesbian-played by a woman. This is a delirious stew that mixes straight and queer to point that all that remains clear is passion and sex.

Although I didn't feel all the production's disparate elements always cohered, I can report that I, my friend, and the rest of the audience shrieked with laughter throughout. Carmen is playing at the Charles Ludlam Theatre in New York's Greenwich Village, Tuesday-Saturday at 8 pm; Sunday at 7 pm. Tickets are $25 and can be reserved at 212-

691-2271.

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OPERA

Passion and death meet

disco in a hilarious, gender-confused romp