Cry-Baby: The Musical, Vancouver Fringe Festival 2017 at the Firehall Arts Centre, 280 East Cordova Street, Vancouver. Through Sept. 17 on selected dates.
Tickets and Info: vancouverfringe.com.
On Aug. 31, 1957, Vancouver Sun reporter Mac Reynolds wrote that if his daughter wriggled out to see Elvis Presley at Empire Stadium he would: “kick her teeth in.”
Oh, the 1950s.
An innocent, modest, and – dare we say it? – better time.
But along came Elvis with his bumps and grinds (“odious coming from a man”) and his fans. Reynolds narrows his already claustrophobic focus when it comes to those fans who “screamed and quivered and shut their eyes, and reached out their hands to him as for salvation.”
Reynolds follows that description by showing us his vulnerability, writing: “It is a frightening thing for a man to watch his women debase themselves.”
Reynolds, bless his heart, was part of the geometric series of squares whose forbidding tone transmuted rock ’n’ roll into forbidden fruit.
That pink angora-black leather era – after “Rocket 88” but before the Mercury Seven – is both satirized and idealized in Cry-Baby: The Musical, based on writer/director John Waters’ 1990 film featuring Johnny Depp as a rockabilly rabble rouser with a teardrop frozen between his Elvis snarl and his dog eyes.
The movie’s cast, which Roger Ebert dubbed: “a pileup at the wax museum,” featured Iggy Pop, Ricki Lake, Traci Lords, Troy Donahue, Willem Dafoe, and Symbionese Liberation Army kidnap victim Patricia Hearst.
For the Fringe Festival, the show runners reached out to Windsor Secondary alum Synthia Yusuf and former North Vancouverite Ali Watson to bring new life to Dupree W. Dupree and Lenora Frigid.
Watson started as a ballet dancer but went “full throttle for musical theatre” in high school following a life-changing production of Wizard of Oz.
“I got addicted,” she says of theatre, adding with a small measure of guilt: “I kind of liked it better than dance.”
Asked what role she played in Wizard of Oz, she laughs. “I was a tree.”
Having acted in Hairspray, another musical based on a John Waters movie, musical director Andy Toth asked Watson if she was interested in auditioning for Dupree, who’s typically played by a black man.
“They called back actors of every race, size, gender. Literally, everyone under the sun was going for this role,” Watson reports.
However, she’s unsure what separated her rendition from the pack.
“When I showed up, the room that they were auditioning in was really far away, so I didn’t get to sneakily eavesdrop as I like to do.”
The character needed to be larger than life, Watson decided.
“He has a really great spunkiness that I’m trying really hard to find.”
But while Watson seems to know where to go to play Dupree, Synthia Yusuf needed some time to orient herself when it came to playing Lenora Frigid, the town crazy.
“I actually don’t find that very funny,” Yusuf explains, discussing concerns about how mental health issues are depicted.
“It was actually really challenging to find the comedy in that. For comedy, it always starts in a place of truth,” she says. “The funniness comes from, I guess, taking it too far.”
Yusuf was compelled to the stage by the feeling she got making people laugh, but she’s very conscious of what or who the audience is laughing at.
Many rehearsals were about finding that line, she says. Is it too much or too little? Was that line real enough? Too real?
“We’re continuously working on that fine balance.”
Watson had a similar reaction when she first went over the book for the show.
“When I first read the script I was like, ‘Is this OK? Can we say this?’”
However, she says she’s grown to appreciate Waters’ farcical style.
Ultimately, the musical is a great idea for someone who wants to “Just go laugh for an hour and a half,” Watson says.
There are serious undertones to the show as well, according to Yusuf.
“It touches on how society views being different,” she says. “Part of the magic of theatre and art is that it teaches you but it also entertains you.”
The show is open to drapes, squares and nerds. However, couples intent on making out are asked to be mindful of the ravages wrought by mononucleosis.
Kicking in the teeth of someone is also not recommended, even if they do enjoy music.
