San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Relive the obscenity with Thrillpeddlers archive.
OK, a theater critic probably shouldn’t have favorites. But listen, because the Thrillpeddlers went defunct in 2017, when they had to move out of the Hypnodrome, their SoMa venue, maybe I can get away with saying that they were formerly my favorite local theater company.
Specializing in Grand Guignol horror theater, revivals of Cockettes musicals and Theater of the Ridiculous works by Charles Ludlam and Charles Busch, the Thrillpeddlers were titans of tastelessness, maestros of the macabre, lords and ladies (and everything in between and beyond) of the lewd.
This spring, in the era of sheltering in place, Producing Artistic Director Russell Blackwood and videographer Mister WA put recordings of past productions online, so now we can all relive a portion of their 26 years of obscenity and silliness. Old fans and new converts alike can watch “Hot Greeks” (produced in 2010 and 2012; think a combination of 1940s college football musicals, Aristophanes’ “Lysistrata” and fearless 1970s drag refracted through 2010s nostalgia); “Vice Palace” (produced in 201112, blending Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death,” Roger Corman’s adaptation of Poe’s story, the aesthetics of Fellini films, and camp high and low); and “Pearls Over Shanghai” (whose first run, beginning in 2009, lasted 22 months, followed by a second run in 2014), which not only broke taboos about racial stereotypes but also spangled and paraded them.
I adored the Thrillpeddlers, and yet I would never consider bringing my family, my inlaws or even a good portion of my friends as guests to their shows. I wasn’t sure if they could handle the sparkly codpieces, the tumescent innuendo, and for the Thrillpeddlers’ “Shocktoberfest” each Halloween, the waterworks of fake blood, the prop torture devices or dismembered body parts, all fleshy, bristly, veiny.
Perhaps just as importantly, I wasn’t sure I could handle friends and family knowing I was totally into all that
stuff. The Thrillpeddlers’ motto was “Sissies stay home!” I might look, talk and act like a sissy, still with strong babysitter, girlnextdoor vibes decades after I played Barbies with little Susannah, but there’s a flamboyant freak underneath the cardigans and canvas sneakers, and the Hypnodrome was my place to let her peep out from hiding.
The first time you approached the Hypnodrome, from 11th Street, right off the Division Street overpass, you’d probably turn back several times, convinced this couldn’t be the right place for a show. There was no sign facing the street, just a spooky showroom window displaying furniture. All around were lifeless storage facilities. Finally, you might work up the nerve to edge into a tiny, poorly lit parking lot, bracing yourself lest something or someone should pop out of the hedges.
Ah, a door ajar in back, with light streaming out. Just as you think, “Could this be it?” Blackwood would probably open the door wider and usher you in, ringmaster of a oneofakind circus. Whereas so many other theater companies compete for the rights to produce the same batch of new plays, their mission statements interchangeable, there was no mistaking the Thrillpeddlers for anyone else. Where others illuminated, they titillated. Where others aimed high, they aimed low on purpose. They were freedom of expression.
At the beginning of the recording of “Vice Palace,” Steve Bollinger is on the drums, and the blondbewigged BirdieBob Watt (who will later in the show play the role Vagina Dentata) is at an electronic keyboard resting on top of the upright piano played by Scrumbly Koldewyn — composer, lyricist and original Cockette — who wears dress, pumps and red wig.
Not 30 seconds into the recording, I had to pause and catch my breath. There, once again, were the red and blue splotches on the permanent set’s rear walls, always reminding me of oxygenated and deoxygenated blood that might spurt during “Shocktoberfest.” There, again, were Koldewyn’s long fingers, with a workman’s expert but casual confidence on the keys. And then: the endearing ensemble, energy and commitment far making up for imprecision, the whole cast numbering about as many as the audience.
I think I paused in order to mourn — not just the loss of the Thrillpeddlers in particular but of my theatergoing rituals in general. To dust off a memento box and lift its lid is to peer not just at a past treasure, but at the lost self who lived that treasure.
I moved on to “Hot Greeks,” my favorite of the three, perhaps for Rik Lopes’ battlelinescharging performance as Lysistrata, president of Tri Thigh Sorority. (A sampling of other character names: Clitoristra, Pendulum Pulaski, Diameter, Sodoma.) I marveled anew that for all its smut and giddiness, Koldewyn, again on the piano, wrote the score a proper overture; that in one moment a bethonged butt struts offstage and in the next a jazzy number gives an informative introduction to ancient Greek theater, complete with swing dance.
In Blackwood’s staging of any show, the less confident performers might be upstage, but the point always seemed to be that there was a place for them anyway, that in their bustiers and feathers and falsies and headpieces, they were still important parts of the parade. The Thrillpeddlers made the case that anybody, of any age or size or identification, could play any role, so long as they had the right attitude.
Today, when live, inperson performance feels daily more distant, in the past and in the future, recordings of the Thrillpeddlers fortify. They remind us of artists’ capacity to build theaters wherever there’s space, that tiny stages can have infinite room.
Lily Janiak is The San Francisco Chronicle’s theater critic. Email: ljaniak@ sfchronicle.com Twitter: @LilyJaniak