WHATEVER HAPPENED TO B.B. JANE?
Like any camp act, the premise of Whatever Happened to B.B. Jane? is so silly it sounds like a bad joke. Take a film that no one in a million years would think of turning into a musical–say, the cult classic Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?–and turn it into a musical.
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Wayne Buidens, who is given credit in the program for “concept design,” has taken an almost word-for-word transcription of the film and subverted wherever and whenever he could the seriousness of the original story, which is about a pair of has-been sisters, one a demented alcoholic who was once a popular child performer on the vaudeville circuit, the other a former movie queen who has been wheelchair bound since an auto accident. Some of Buidens’s subversions are subtle, such as the casting of a very adrogynous-looking man (Tony Lage) in the secondary role of a neighbor, played in the movie by a woman. Other subversions are much less subtle, such as having a man in drag (Phillip Alcala) play Joan Crawford’s role or having the woman playing Bette Davis’s role (Deanna Norman) affect an amusingly god-awful Bette Davis imitation throughout the play.
The best performances are by men cast in women’s roles. Phillip Alcala is superb as Joan Crawford playing Blanche Hudson. He captures perfectly the maudlin way Crawford milks the role of the long-suffering Blanche for every ounce of sympathy. Tyron Sean Perry dances up a storm as Blanche Hudson as a child in the flashback scenes. And Kevin Bellie, who may well be the most graceful overweight actor in town, plays a variety of wonderful characters, including two out-of-left-field cameos, Ethel Merman and Divine. No camp production should be without him.
