Pussy on the House

The first time I saw Ryan Landry he was playing Blanche Dubois -- not in a production of A Streetcar Named Desire, but in a lame parody called Belle Reprieve in a long-gone theater in the South End. While everyone else in this production approached the material with the subtlety of a sledgehammer, Landry touchingly captured the fragile spirit of Tennessee William's tragic heroine. That he managed to rise above the disaster around him only indicated that he was a talent to watch.

Cut to nearly 10 years later. Landry and his company the Gold Dust Orphans are putting their own spin on a Williams' play, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, with Pussy on the House, and the results are nothing less than spectacular. That 2006 production wins Landry and the Orphans an Elliot Norton Award from the Boston Theater Critics' Association (full disclosure: I am a member who happily voted for the production) for Best Fringe Production. It also helped the company reach the wider audience that, for whatever the reason, had eluded them to this point, despite such triumphs as The Bad Seed, sCarrie and Rosemary's Baby: The Musical.

It could be just coincidence that Landry and most of his original cast are back at Machine (or as he likes to refer to it as "The Ramrod Center for the Performing Arts") with a spiffy revival just weeks prior to the centenary of Williams' birth. Perhaps it was intentional. Either way his parody pays homage to the spirit of this great American queer playwright in the best of all possible ways. It would be easy to imagine if Williams were able to see it, he'd be smiling his Cheshire cat grin in appreciation.

Deft, contemporary resonances

He would also likely marvel at the deft way Landry has given his play a contemporary resonance, turning its issues involving an inheritance into a stinging commentary on the lack of rights for gay couples have in this legal area. He does so through the simplest means possible: by turning Big Daddy, Williams' powerful patriarch fallen by cancer, into Big Momma Pollup, a bull-dyke with a towering blonde beehive and a common-law wife for some 30-odd years named Aunt Sukie. In Landry's re-imagining, Aunt Sukie's stake in Big Momma's sprawling, polyester plantation (the biggest this side of Shanghai) is safe as long as Big Momma is alive; but once she's gone, Aunt Sukie's property rights evaporate as well. Such is the state of gay rights in most states, especially the Deep South.

It is a powerful statement, carefully textured in the mix of gags that are the essence of Landry's parodies. Those audience members, though, looking for a Carol Burnett-like treatment of Williams' play had best look to YouTube; while there are plenty of laughs to be had in Pussy on the House, this is an adaptation true to Williams' more serious, and poignant concerns about facing death and living life. Don't be surprised to be laughing one moment, verklempt the next.

There are also other surprises as well: as in the original, Brick, the hunky heir-apparent to Big Momma's fortunes, has withdrawn (in this case to a tree house) at the death of Skipper, his best friend. But in Landry's skewed treatment, Skipper is the co-host of a children's television show with Brick and is... well, it is best you see for yourself. Drunk and suicidal, Brick avoids his wife Maggie, his mother Aunt Sukie and his surrogate parent Big Momma; even though it is Big Momma's birthday. To bring Brick back into the family, which also includes his dim-witted Elvis-impersonating brother Gooper and his shrill, pregnant wife Mae, Maggie has the birthday party moved up onto the roof where Brick has taken up residency.

What prompts the celebration is that Big Momma is told that her health concerns are merely the result of a spastic colon; though Maggie, Mae and Gooper suspect otherwise and are forming the battle-lines as to just whom will inherit Big Momma's empire. What happens next pretty much follows Williams' play, spiced with Landry's characteristic broad touches and his sharply realized commentary on LGBT issues. Williams never expressed his attitudes about gay rights in his plays, but you would like to think that he'd be in synch with Landry's empathetic expression of them here. They gives Pussy on the House its strength and poignancy, and is not too dissimilar from the intelligent approach that Landry brought to his performance of Blanche DuBois in that forgettable parody so many years ago.

His Orphans have never been better: repeating his role as Big Momma, Larry Coen booms with callous pride, only to reveal his more vulnerable side when the truth of his situation is revealed to him by Brick. Odd as it sounds, his second act reverie about his drag queen father is both deeply touching and hilarious at the same time. If there's a performance that anchors this production it is this one. Chris Loftus skillfully conveys Brick's anger and pain, as well as his gradual return to the world of the living. Penny Champayne once again captures the soft center beneath Maggie's brittle, sensuous edge in a performance that is a loving homage to the iconic Liz Taylor performance on film. Landry quite effectively conveys the flutteringly anxiety and tender sweetness of Aunt Sukie. Stealing the show is Olive Another as the nasty and exceedingly shrill Mae. As he has shown in the past, his delivery is priceless. Delta Miles (Gooper), Keith Orr (Preacher) and Gene Dante (in a number of smaller roles) are in perfect pitch with the play's mix of rollicking comedy and melodrama. It is these seemingly disparate elements that so smoothly blend in Jim Byrne's expert direction.

Pussy on the House ranks high on the list of achievements of the Gold Dust Orphans. If you have never seen it, it will make a terrific introduction to their unique oeuvre; and if you have, it is well worth re-visiting to laugh, to cry and to see how parody can rise to level of art.

Pussy on the House continues through March 20, 2011 at Machine Nightclub, 1256 Bolyston Street, Boston, MA. Friday & Saturdays at 8pm; Sundays at 5pm. For more information, visit the Gold Dust Orphans Facebook page,