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Review in The Wall Street Journal

April 19,2000
By A. Gamerman

Theater folk must really miss the days when hookers walked 42nd Street and Broadway playhouses rubbed elbows with peep shows -- before Disney came in and ruined all the fun. How else to account for not one, but two stage versions of "The Wild Party," Joseph Moncure March's 1928 poem about showbiz lowlifes, in one season? Andrew Lippa threw the first "Party" at the Manhattan Theatre Club earlier this year. Now Michael John LaChiusa and George C. Wolfe have opened their musical version of "The Wild Party" at the Virginia Theatre. It's an ode to the bad old days of vaudeville, which the production lovingly evokes in every detail, from the shabby red velvet curtain that sweeps the stage to the zaftig, tassled chorus girls who listlessly shake their stuff in the opening number. There are pitfalls to this literal approach -- sometimes its hard to tell "The Wild Party" apart from the joylessly seedy razzmatazz it evokes.

Wearing a platinum hairdo and a big fake smile, Toni Collette plays Queenie, a dancer/stripper who is caught in a fatal tango with a clown named Burrs. Mandy Patinkin turns him into a crooner in the Al Jolson mold: This Burrs makes his entrance in blackface and delivers most of his lines with an ingratiating Amos 'n' Andy-style accent. Amazingly, Mr. Patinkin pulls it off. He's a performer of almost frightening intensity who can take an audience with him almost anywhere he wants to go. Ms. Collette has a lovely, supple voice, but she has trouble showing us just what's under Queenie's painted grimace.

The life of this "Wild Party" is Eartha Kitt. In the best kind of typecasting, she plays Dolores, an aging (but timeless) vaudeville legend. Prowling the stage in a feathered gown slit up to there -- her legs, at 73, are superb -- she turns her face up to catch the lights as she growls out Mr. LaChiusa's songs. "I can tell you that no party lasts forever," she rasps, "I been there and there and there and seen enough." At such moments, Ms. Kitt is a high priestess of showbiz.

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