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MAIN~16 of 52 • MAIN~16 of 52 • MAIN~16 of 52 • MAIN~16 of 52 • MAIN~16 of 52 • AmbushMag.COM • Dec. 18, 2007-Jan. 1, 2008 • The One & Only Official Gay Mardi Gras Guide • GayMardiGras.COM• Dec. 18, 2007-Jan. 1, 2008 • The One & Only Official Gay Mardi Gras Guide • GayMardiGras.COM• Dec. 18, 2007-Jan. 1, 2008 • The One & Only Official Gay Mardi Gras Guide • GayMardiGras.COM• Dec. 18, 2007-Jan. 1, 2008 • The One & Only Official Gay Mardi Gras Guide • GayMardiGras.COM• Dec. 18, 2007-Jan. 1, 2008 • The One & Only Official Gay Mardi Gras Guide • GayMardiGras.COM

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celebrazzi (celebrations-paparazzi) celebrazzi (celebrations-paparazzi)

Mickey Hebert, Jim Comptonand Yvonne Bruneau treatedpatrons and friends of

Mickey Nolan Salon to the first holidayparty of the season December 1st forCheer & Merriment! Martinis & Horsd’Oeuvres in New Orleans famed FrenchQuarter.

Melanie celebrates her birth-day with partner Jan and abunch of friends at The

Friendly Bar in the Marigny neighborhoodof New Orleans.

Robert, Toby, Chuck, Brad andChuck raise over $7,000 forMake A Wish Foundation at 4

Seasons and Toby’s annual ChristmasParty in Metairie complete with a lusciousholiday buffet and fantastic auction.

Left: Lil, Brigette and Irish Mikewelcome friends and patronsto Ninth Circle’s A Very Fairy

Christmas, the 7/7/7 bash celebrating theclub’s 7th anniversary on December 7th at7pm in New Orleans.

Marcy Marcell joins Marsha and Rip Naquin-Delain following their corona-tion as Ms. & Mr. LSGRA by the Louisiana State Gay Rodeo AssociationBoard of Directors including vice president George Schwandt, president

Lance Pippin (front), secretary Joe O’Connor, Rodeo Trustee J. Robert Field, member-at-large Mike Andrews and treasurer George Tresch at Cowpokes in New Orleans. Theduties of the first Mr. and Ms. LSGRA is to bring awareness and raise funds for the rodeoassociation throughout 2008 culminating when LSGRA host the 24th annual Interna-tional Gay Rodeo Association Convention and Royalty Competition October 29-November 2, 2008 at the Marriott Hotel. For more info visit LSGRA.COM.

Queen & King Amon Ra Dar-win Reed and GeorgeTresch host Amon Ra’s Holi-

day Sunday Social in the Marigny Theatreraising funds for the Krewe of Amon Ra BalMasque XLIII: My Favorite Things set forJanuary 12, 2008 at English Turn CountryClub. The affair was catered by BywaterBar.B.Que serving up the eatery’s famouschicken and andouille gumbo, barbequedpulled pork and boneless chicken, coleslaw, potato salad, mac & cheese, bakedbeans, fresh breads and desserts.

Lord Consort XXIV and emceePrincesse Stephaney, 1st run-ner-up Ursuline Burgundy,

newly crowned Ms. Louisiana LeatheretteSolitaire and Lords’ ball captain DavidBoyd celebrate following the presentationof winners at the annual Ms. LouisianaLeatherette contest hosted at the Phoenixin New Orleans. The event raised funds forthe Lords of Leather Bal Masque XXV setfor Sunday, February 3, 2008 at the AlarioCenter. For more info visitLordsofLeather.COM.

Scott and Captain Mickey hostthe fab Xmas Auction and Buf-fet at The Friendly Bar in New

Orleans raising funds for the Krewe ofSatyricon Bal Masque VI set for Sunday,January 27, 2008 at the Sugar Mill. Formore info visitMysticKreweofSatyricon.COM.

King Petronius Mae Falgoutjoins Warm Hearts forWomen’s president Sherran

at JohnPaul’s in New Orleans for the 1stannual Charlene Schneider Toy Drivebenefiting needy children.

Above: GM Tommy Elias an-nounces Miss Snow FlakeDiamond and Miss Jingle Bell

Coca with the help of emcee BlancheDebris at the holiday contest hosted byDance Club of the Year Oz in New Orleans.


trodding the boards

by Brian Sands E-mail: [email protected]

In the spirit of the holidays, I’mgoing to acknowledge only thosethings about which I have nice

things to say. Well, more or less. Heregoes—

It was worth a journey to the NorthShore to see Slidell Little Theatre’s Singin’in the Rain, a stage adaptation of thebeloved movie. Despite a somewhatchoppy book, Scott Sauber’s direction gavethe musical a cinematic flow and he exhib-ited a real talent for choreographing com-plicated mise en crowd scènes.

As Don Lockwood, Josh St. Cyr maynot have erased memories of Gene Kelly—who could?—but he came pretty darnclose. Unlike Don’s putative lover LinaLamont who’s said to be a triple threat,“she can’t act, dance or sing”, St. Cyr is atriple threat who can do all three, fabu-lously, and he conveyed an endearingcharm as well.

Bryan Reilly brought a sly presence toDon’s sidekick Cosmo Brown andmatched St. Cyr in the talent and charmdepartments. If both were a tad too youngfor their parts, give’em a few years andthey’ll be Broadway worthy.

With a sure comic presence, JanieHeck made Lina a villainess you loved tohate, wonderfully maintaining a nasal voicethat could pierce metal even when singingWhat’s Wrong With Me. Vicki Lighter wasgood in the Debbie Reynolds role thoughher being visibly older than St. Cyr was abit incongruous with Kathy’s being sup-posedly a fresh new face. (Hey, I’m notbeing bitchy; her bio said she’s the “motherof two teenagers”.)

There were nice touches throughoutincluding Joshua Brewer’s vocal soloist,Sam Beverly’s make-up girl, Sally AnneBuras’ period costumes and LindseyPrice’s slam-bang choreography. Andwhen actual rain started coming down forthe title number and St. Cyr launched intothe celebrated pas de deux with his um-brella, it was simply the best musicalnumber seen on any local stage in recentmemory.

Returning to Orleans Parish, whenBert V. Royal’s Dog Sees God: Confes-sions of a Teenage Blockhead debutedin Manhattan in 2004, The New York Timesadmired its “clever script [that had] charmand depth.”A year later, when it opened fora commercial run, a different reviewer inthe same paper completely dismissed it.

Based on Gary Rucker’s recent pro-duction at Tulane, I’d lean more toward theformer opinion for this tale of what hap-pens to the Peanuts gang once they growup and become high school students.Though there’s still a lot of humor to behad, Royal imbues his story with a melan-cholic air as Charlie Brown & Co. confrontdeath, confusing sexuality and many ofthe other serious matters that kids have todeal with today. Though I wish the scripthad a little more heft, Royal captures thezeitgeist of our times while leaving us witha touching, metaphysical and unexpectedconclusion involving someone with theinitials CS.

Rucker served the text terrifically by

not overplaying it or yocking it up for easylaughs. (That said, the audience I saw itwith, mostly Tulane students, wasstrangely subdued unlike others, I’m told,during the run.) If he didn’t capture everysingle one of the script’s facets, that couldbe chalked up to the inexperience of someof the cast members.

As Beethoven, the Schroeder charac-ter abused by his Dad and now a sensitivegay boy ostracized by the “in” crowd, andTricia/Peppermint Pattie, who covers herlatent lesbianism by putting down others,Sean Knapp and Claire Gresham, re-spectively, had the best material to workwith and made the most of it. Ryan MichaelDavis as a now germ-phobic, bullyingMatt/Pig Pen, and Rebecca Williams asMarcy, still Peppermint Pattie’s acolyte,were just as good with more one-notecharacters.

Andrew Farrier was a little too good-looking as C.B./Charlie Brown but nego-tiated the role’s emotional hairpin turnswell while carrying the brunt of the show’sphilosophizing. Incarcerated in an institu-tion for setting the Little Redheaded Girl’shair on fire, Meredith Mullins was fun in herone scene even if she lacked Lucy’s impe-riousness.

Over at the Hi Ho Lounge throughDecember 22, Michael Martin is elucidat-ing the joys, temptations and mysteries ofthe Big Easy via his adaptation of RobertKinney’s 1946 guidebook, The Bachelorin New Orleans.

Strolling into the Lounge in a dapperoutfit, Martin proceeds to give advice onhow to get the most out of New Orleans’notable institutions, how to avoid becom-ing that bane of civilization “a tourist” (“treatyour bartender well”), things to watch outfor (“ladies of the evening, taxi drivers andbeing lonely as here it’s easy to makefriends”, words of advice that are still true,eh?), how to get the most out of BourbonStreet & la vie de boheme and, lastly, howto handle romance in the Big Easy.

Among the highlights of this 70 minutemonolog, there’s a wonderful descriptionof Mardi Gras and at the end Kinney/Martinperfectly encapsulates the urge any saneperson has to return to NOLA after one hasleft.

Martin’s outsize personality is well-suited to the material and he makes aconvincing raconteur, astutely handlingaudience members who want to get intothe act. Having seen the show just after itsThanksgiving hiatus, I’m sure by nowMartin has a firm command of his lines sothat nothing should prevent him from giv-ing full-throttled life to the material. If I’mnot absolutely convinced of Bachelor’sdramatic (vs. narrative) value, it’s still en-tertaining and fun, getting more and moreinvolving as it goes along its merry way.

More merriment can be had over at LeChat Noir where Scrooge in Rouge! isholding forth till December 30th. In whatcould become a holiday perennial, RickyGraham, Jefferson Turner and JeffreyRoberson, a.k.a. Varla Jean Merman, lov-ingly send up the British Music Hall tradi-tion with their version of A Christmas

Carol featuring terrible puns, consistentexcessiveness and 70 jam-packed min-utes of frivolity.

Though 17 of the Royal Music Hall 20-Member Variety Players have been felledby food poisoning, with Graham,Roberson/Merman--quickly becomingNew Orleans’ answer to Lunt &Fontanne—and, convincing in various trou-ser roles, Yvette Hargis quick-changingcostumes faster than you can say “QueenVictoria”, you’d swear you really are see-ing a cast of twenty. I’d kill to be backstageto watch the costumes flying on and off.

Speaking of costumes, they rangedfrom a Christmas tree to a human-sizedpickle. Cecile Casey Covert, abetted byAmanda Hebert’s wildly imaginative wigs,has outdone herself with flounces andflourishes and petticoats that perfectlydefine each and every one of the manycharacters. If, ultimately, this is not a Christ-mas Carol that elicits a lump in the throatfor Scrooge’s conversion, what do youexpect from a show with such lyrics as“Tiny Tim, Tiny Tim/Can anyone be aspathetic as him?”

While not technically a Christmasshow, Purlie, seen recently at Le Petit,seems appropriate for this season withits tale of redemption and right triumphingover prejudice and petty mindedness.Having never seen it before I wish I couldsay Purlie is a neglected masterpiece.But, adapted from Ossie Davis’ potentplay Purlie Victorious, there’s no escap-ing the fact that with a score that hardlylingers on one’s mind, Purlie is a well-meaning, mildly enjoyable but ultimatelysecond rate musical.

That, however, did not stop the cast atLe Petit from giving some first rate perfor-mances. As the preacher determined toget a church of his own, Fenwick BroyardIII’s handsome visage, powerful voice anddynamic presence made for a Purlie thatcould hardly have been improved upon.That this was his stage debut made hiscommanding performance that muchmore astonishing. An MPH candidate atTulane, let’s hope this will not be the lasttime we see Broyard trodding the boards.

Idella Johnson, an Ambie Award nomi-nee three years ago for Eubie!, madeLutiebelle, who starts off as just a pawn inPurlie’s scheme to get $500 that is right-fully his and winds up stealing his heart,very “country” but didn’t overplay it. HerLutiebelle was delightful but genuinelytouching as she revealed her sad child-hood.

Asia Rainey was so natural as Missy,Purlie’s sister-in-law and ally, bringingwry wisdom, strength and world-weari-ness to the role, that it was hard to believethat she, too, was making her musicaltheater debut. The incomparable DaneRhodes, done up in white beard and Colo-nel Sanders attire as the owner of themodern day cotton plantation where Purlieis set, demonstrated just how ugly bone-deep racism can be, concurrently patron-izing and threatening his employees; thathe could also pull off the comic song BigFish, Little Fish did not diminish anaudience’s satisfaction at his demise.The ever reliable Carol Sutton was fine asRhodes’ housekeeper though I wish shehad had more to do.

Joshua Palmer’s scenery consistingof the shack where Missy and Purlie liveand the plantation commissary displayeda high degree of verisimilitude. KeshaMcKey’s choreography aptly captured the

characters’ sense of joy, determinationand oppression.

Moving from the fields of South Geor-gia back to New Orleans’ Jackson Square,though my colleague Patrick Shannon willprovide a more detailed review of Puccini’sthree one act opera’s done last month bythe New Orleans Opera Association,Gianni Schicci, the third opera of IlTrittico’s three, was a sheer delight as itstale of an inheritance and greedy relativeswas imaginatively transported to an apart-ment in the Pontalba in the 1950’s. Thedirection had just the right effervescence,the entire cast sung beautifully and totallygot into the playful spirit, and the transla-tion, which substituted references toMarrerro, Westwego, Mignon Faget andthe Huey P. Long bridge for the originalones, was absolutely brilliant.

If the universe portrayed in The Fix,seen last month at Delgado, seemed a bitfar-fetched with its political dynasty filledwith druggies and mob connections, whatwith William Jefferson’s frozen $90,000and Larry Craig’s foot-tapping skills mak-ing headlines, I suppose nothing can beconsidered too far-fetched these days. Infact, in the ten years since its world pre-miere in London, John Dempsey’s bookand lyrics seem absolutely prescient evenif their satire is more Saturday Night Live101 than as biting as we’re served up inour daily papers.

While I totally admire Delgado forpresenting something previously unseenin NOLA, I just wish the material, particu-larly Dana P. Rowe’s music, had beenbetter. Despite that, Bryan Wagar wascompelling as a dissolute dolt thrust intonational prominence. And as his mother,the matriarch of the nasty Chandlers,Tracey E. Collins, in a beautifully cali-brated performance of assured venality,proved to be a Livia for the post-Sopranosera.

Once a ground-breaking metaphorfor love and commitment in the time ofAIDS, Craig Lucas’ Prelude to a Kiss, haslost a lot of its oomph now that drug cock-tails can keep HIV+ people looking fine foryears and years. Having missed its earlierstage and screen incarnations, I have toadmit I was a little disappointed byPrelude’s thinness though appreciativeof the Actor’s Theatre of New Orleans forgiving me the opportunity to see it.

Among Prelude’s cast, Angela Papalemade a believable transformation fromyoung woman to old-man-in-young-woman’s-body. Peter Gabb was likewisevery good at channeling the personality ofa young woman despite having a bodythat’s been around for a while; he wasespecially fine in Lucas’ big monolog aboutmortality.

In smaller roles, David Glasser’s the-atrical flair was amusing while JessiNorton’s restrained portrayal was all themore impressive for being so differentfrom her more showy role in Boy Gets Girl.

Lastly, what kind things can I sayabout Jerry Rabushka’s Woof! The RoadShow, a touring production about a back-stage gay romance? Well, co-star LarrySowell had a pleasant singing voice. Andit was only 50 minutes long. Ho-Ho-Ho!

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Mr. Louisiana Leather 2008 MichaelAlbracht join Mr. & Ms. LSGRA Rip &

Marsha Naquin-Delain following theircoronation at Cowpokes

LSGRA Board of Directors pres. Lance,vp George, sec. Joe, rodeo trustee

Robert, treas. George & member-at-large Mike present the 1st Mr. & Ms.

LSGRA at Cowpokes

Elizabeth Bouvier emcees Mr. & Ms.LSGRA Coronation at Cowpokes

Tami Tarmac & Marcy Marcell entertainfor the Mr. & Ms. LSGRA Coronation

Elizabeth Bouvier, Marcy Marcell,Princesse Stephaney, Tami Tarmac,

Donnie Jay & Texas LeathermanEmeritus Denny Summors (front) raise

over $160 for LSGRA during the Mr. &Ms. LSGRA Coronation at Cowpokes

King Cake Queen Princesse Stephaney,King Petronius Mae & Queen PetroniusElect Dawn at Petronius’ QBSN hosted

in the Marigny Theatre

Charlene, Regina & Juliet pop in forPetonius’ QBSN hostedat the Marigny Theatre

Petronius Captain Bill & King PetroniusMae auction off a wreath

at Petronius’ QBSN

King & Queen Petronius Elect Charles &Dawn snagged by Princess Stephaney

Sandy Phillips joins Petonius’ QBSNholiday show at the Marigny Theatre

Amon Ra Prom Queen C. Alice Desurentertains for Amon Ra’s Holiday

Sunday Social at the Marigny Theatre

Tami Tarmac sells 50/50 raffle ticketsfor Amon Ra’s Holiday Sunday Social

Pres. & MC Lauren Brown & Cathy Foxsparkle at Amon Ra’sHoliday Sunday Social

Amon Ra’s Miss America Rhonda Rogetdoes Santa at Amon Ra’s

Holiday Sunday Social

Josie Mae Cotton & Rudy pop in forAmon Ra’s Holiday Sunday Social

Special Function Lt. Gary Vandeventergets things going for the Ms. Louisiana

Leatherette at the Phoenix

Solitaire wins Ms. LouisianaLeatherette

Ursuline Burgundy places as 1strunner-up in Ms. Louisiana Leatherette

Ms. Louisiana Leatherette judges: Mr.LA Leather ’97 Melvin Knight, Mr. LALeather ’08 Michael Albracht & Sire

Ursus ’07 Juan Tarzia

Eva Las Vegas guest stars in the Ms.Louisiana Leatherette at the Phoenix

snappaparazzi

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