Corny Meets Horny in Sharp Noir Parody
By Colin Thomas
Publish Date: 5-Aug-2004
The Well of Horniness
By Holly Hughes. Directed by Ilena Lee Cramer. A Screaming Weenie production.
At Vibes Lounge until Saturday, August 7

If you don't have an unwelcome pickle stuck up your butt, you're going to like this show. And if you actually enjoy playing hide the produce, you're going to love it.

American playwright Holly Hughes is one of the sexually unapologetic artists who drove the bigoted Sen. Jesse Helms out of his small mind by accepting funds from the National Endowment for the Arts a couple of decades ago. Hughes has said that the best thing about her 1984 script is that it has no redeeming social value, but we shouldn't take her camp bravado too literally. The play's title alludes to Radclyffe Hall's 1928 novel The Well of Loneliness, which had its own trouble with censorious politicians. Banned in England because it pleaded for compassion for "inverts", the book went on to sell over a million copies in Hall's lifetime. Hughes takes the pathetic, suicidal sensibility of Loneliness and turns it inside out, revealing playful resilience and enthusiastic appetites.

As a grey-haired homo, I feel compelled to deliver these historical lessons, but don't let my seriousness get in the way of your good time; The Well of Horniness is mostly wonderfully inane, a staged radio play with an unlikely film noir plot. Vicki, blond and brainless, is engaged to Rod, proud owner of the carpet store Shag 'n' Stuff. Vicki falls for Rod's sister, Georgette, at the local lounge and flees when Georgette is killed. Was Vicki packin' the rod that smoked Georgette, or was it Babs, the jealous coat-check girl? It's up to Garnet McClit, "a gorgeous gendarme who loves murder almost as much as she loves dames", to figure it out.

The narrative proceeds like a hyperkinetic pinball. It turns out that one of the characters has a twin who was raised by raccoons, and at one point, Rod and a cop go off on a riff about giving free carpeting to El Salvador. Clearly, the destination isn't the point of this story; it's all about how much fun you can have getting there.

Much of the pleasure comes from deliberately corny and vulgar humour. "What's the matter, honey?" Georgette asks Vicki when they meet. "You sit in a puddle or are you just glad to see me?" "We'd like to make you feel real welcome," a trio of leering lesbo inmates tells the newly incarcerated Vicki, "but they lock the broom closet."

Tight timing is everything with this sort of material, and director Ilena Lee Cramer and her cast do a remarkably good job of staying on top of the rhythms and the dozens of faux-radio sound cues. ("Vicki's soul called out to the heavens," McClit tells us, and we hear the pulse of a busy signal.) More importantly, Cramer's actors are relaxed and creative in their characterizations. Call it male bonding, but I especially enjoyed Amy Lucille Wilding's work as Rod. Her gestures and expressions, which she sometimes freezes for a millisecond, are like snapshots that reveal the hilarious stupidity of men who haven't copped to their privilege. The ensemble's acting styles aren't entirely consistent, but everyone in this five-member troupe is strong.

There are a couple of problems. The cast screams every time McClit, who acts as narrator, says the show's title; the back room at Vibes Lounge is too small for that kind of earsplitting volume. And the appropriately named Screaming Weenie Productions breaks up the 75-minute text with two 20-minute intervals. But what the hell? That choice will make the bartender happy, and bar culture is where this show's sublimely silly sensibility comes from.