No, wait, that's Jungle Love, by Steve Miller.
The guys behind the Big Gay Frat House are presenting the hilarious Jungle Red at the Victoria Theater this month. Jungle red is a musical satire of the original (not the wretched remake) play/film The Women. Varla Jean Merman headlines, and the cast is superbly rounded out by Trauma Flintstone, Katya Smirnoff-Skyy, Ethel Merman, and others.
Oh my God is this show funny.
It's a bit low-rent, and in a full house it's a little hard to hear the performers who aren't miked. RMJ and I made a date of it Saturday night, and we had a pretty full house. Mostly gay men, and all seemed to have had plenty to drink ahead of time. The crowd to our left was hammered, and a bit distracting (dropping cups, talking at the show as if it were television, that sort of thing).
There were clever lines, perfect expressions, dead-on comic timing and some wonderful scene stealing by "Zips Up the Back, No Bone" (I'll have to look up who that was later). Varla of course owns whatever scenes she's in, which turns out to be not all that many. But honestly Katya serves heaps of praise for filling Rosalind Russell's role so adroitly.
Along with Kevin, RMJ and I are sort of Plush Room/Cabaret/Drag cohorts, and this was a must-see with RoMo. RoMo also has a shared connection with Varla as he was dormmates with the likes of Hedda Lettuce et alia at FIT long before they donned makeup and falsies.
Much fun.
Go to the show while you can.
Another pleasant surprise was the company of Canadian Guy, who joined us at the very last minute on a whim. (He is not "a" Canadian guy, but Canadian Guy. His name is Guy, and he's from Canada. Kevin had an acting partner Sharon, who recognized me at brunch and introduced me to her new roommate Guy, who had just moved here from the "Canadia", who I then I invited to the Feathers and Fringe party.)
Neither RMJ nor Guy had seen The Women so a lot of the jokes must have been lost on them. But they still loved the show. Guy is clearly new to the whole SF scene, and while he is certainly charming and fun by his own devices, it was also amusing to pair a someone fresh off the beaver truck with the likes of me and RMJ.
We had to stop by a wedding/engagement/bachelor party at Mecca. They were having a Swank night, and it was the usual AoF sort of crowd (i.e. a little shallow for my swimming). At least DJ Christopher was spinning and he had a great set going on. I got to see some wonderful people (shouts to Suzan and Doug) as well as some others I'd have just rather not talked to, and we made enjoyable enough small talk with roughly 60% of the crowd we knew. Such is Mecca. That goes hand-in-hand with the $9 cocktail.
A good quote from the night was the exchange with Guy, who had only us as lifeguards in these shark-infested waters. I had just said something admittedly bitchy regarding someone I didn't care for and sought to avoid. To his credit, Guy called me out on it. He basically said, "You're being a snob too. You call these people snobs, but then you criticize them."
I explained my point of view, "See, the guys I'm calling snobs discount anyone without the right body type or bank account (and either will do even though both are preferable), regardless of who they are. We have gotten to know a lot of people, and there are those we don't like as individuals. Tonight, they just all happen to be in the same room. Being a snob is denigrating a class or group of people you don't know for superficial reasons, whereas I feel that I made the effort to get to know them before not liking them for who they are."
Guy was also impressed by the non-verbal RMJ and I have developed in social situations. We can totally read the other, and I enjoyed frustrating RMJ when I knew he wanted to move along but I was having too much fun watching him alternatively squirm and deftly dig for information.
Okay, now I am feeling a bit bitchy.
We ultimately took our fun and our Canadian for a Castro crawl.
Guy is great. Welcome to SF.
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