MOVIE QUEENS
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The present time is the early 80s; after a long separation, Adele and Meg have left semiretirement to star together on Broadway. For the famously feuding golden girls it’s no easy reunion. Though Adele has been a recluse for many years on a Caribbean island, she’s still playing the grande dame–late for rehearsals, succumbing to drink and self-pity, feeling old and scared that her comeback will go nowhere. Above all, Adele is still locked away in her closet, unable to admit that her love for a woman makes her a lesbian.
Fifty years later, it’s no easier. Meg argues, “So many more people are out of the closet today. If we’d been together now, we could have been more honest without risking everything.” Adele answers bitterly, “There’s just as much pressure to stay hidden in Hollywood as there ever was. Name me three living movie stars who are openly gay. Name me one.” Meg still won’t take any crap from those who aren’t out: appearing on a talk show, she deftly puts a headline-hunting interviewer still in the closet himself in his place.
Madelyn Spidle strikes sparks as the younger Meg. Like a young Katharine Hepburn, she’s palpably eager for life and unwilling to sell herself short. Just as fresh but much more muted, Laurena Mullins’s Adele blows hot and cold as she wavers between her fears and her love. There’s nothing forced or formulaic in the lovers’ uncensored love scenes, the sultriest stuff since Bailiwick Repertory opened Secrets.
