If you agree that child star Donnie Osmond was “homosexual catnip” and that any performance of The Diary of Anne Frank could use a tap dance number, Mary’s Attic hosts a play every Friday and Saturday night that may appeal to you.
The Rip Nelson Halloween Spooktacular by Hell in a Handbag Productions takes place in the 70s during the television special of the same title. Fictional B-list star Rip Nelson, played by actor Ed Jones, is asked to do a Halloween special in which various celebrities from the 60s and 70s such as Susan Olsen and Bea Arthur make cheesy guest appearances and sub-par performances between seducing and snapping at each other backstage. The actors are in on the joke; the performances are satiric homages to a variety shows of the 70s which producer, writer and actor David Cerda admits “weren’t very good.”
“It’s just about nostalgia, a look back on the dead 70s variety show. It was just odd and it’s just fun,” said Jones.
Rip is an alcoholic, hostile, self-sabotaging actor whose career peaked at a B-list movie. Rip drinks to cope with his anxiety and tells his jokes on stage with desperation and a grimace that betrays his attempt at professionalism: he knows he isn’t funny, no matter how often the sound director plays the laugh track. However, Rip’s humor shines when he doesn’t try to be likeable. Backstage, his makeup artist Gladys, performed by Barbara Figgins, lectures him about his alcoholism until he threatens, “Gladys, if you don’t shut up, I’m gonna rip off your saggy boobs and use them as windsocks.”
Gladys and Rip have the best chemistry as she reassures him about his talent and attempts to curb his drinking. Rip accepts the support, but not the advice and always has an excuse for his drug use. She refutes his reasoning that he drinks in the morning because “it’s 5 o’clock somewhere” because he isn’t in Mexico. Rip retorts, “Does it count if I’ve had a Mexican in me?”
Rip Nelson is the show’s only fictional character. Originally named The Paul Lynde Halloween Spooktacular after the actor who held a similar variety show in the 70s, the show had to change its name once Cerda received a cease and desist letter from another production with the rights to Lynde’s name. Cerda then developed the personality Rip Nelson, a composite of Charles Nelson Reilly and Rip Taylor, television personalities from the era.
Many of the actors are men in drag wearing wigs, fishnet stockings and cone bras. They perform skits or musical numbers like Shelly Duvall’s cover of David Bowie’s “Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps),” performed by actor Alex Grelle, where Duvall sings through her overbite and is chased by two masked male dancers in sequined, spandex costumes, one with a bare midriff.
Young people may not be familiar with the artists parodied in Spooktacular, and may not get all of the references. The show is entertaining nonetheless, but targets an older audience.
The impressions are brilliant, exaggerated, and wildly entertaining. The acting is as over the top as the heavy makeup and glittery gold platform heels; between Charo’s shrill barks, heavy lisp, and pelvic thrusts, Phyllis Diller’s room-filling guffaw and snappy one-liners, and Joan Crawford’s attempts to lure unsuspecting aspiring dancers into her dressing room to teach them new “stretches,” Halloween Spooktacular is an hour of camp fun.
However, Spooktacular doesn’t just rely on humor — Bob Dylan and Kate Smith, performed by actors Red Genson and Missy Aguilar respectively, duet a beautiful mash up of “God Bless America” and Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind,” eliciting the loudest applause of the night from the audience. Rip changes the mood, however, when he refuses to let Dylan play any of his “protest crap,” so Dylan compromises and sings “Monster Mash.”
The Rip Nelson Halloweeen Spooktacular plays Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 p.m. at Mary’s Attic in Andersonville, Chicago until Nov. 6. Tickets may be purchased at brownpapertickets.com.
