I’m not really drawn to plays about cross-dressing. Whether it’s La Cage aux Folles, Priscilla: Queen of the Desert or Hairspray, it’s not really an area I’ve developed much interest in.
So looking at the poster for Leading Ladies, Repertory Philippines’ current offering at Onstage Greebelt 1 (until March 3), I was not convinced I would be in for an enjoyable experience. A cartoon of hairy legs peeking out beneath ‘50s-style dresses told me it was a comedy. Sometimes comedy is not pretty. And, as we all know, guys who reluctantly wear dresses lack the commitment to pull off being “pretty.” Leave that to the Thai ladyboys.
But Leading Ladies by Ken Ludwig is not about the current era, where cross-dressing and ladyboys are as common as Ru Paul reality shows. Actually, it’s a throwback to an earlier era — the ‘50s, specifically 1958, when the subject was still fairly new to audiences. Just a couple years later, cross-dressing would be played for huge laughs in Billy Wilder’s Some Like it Hot, possibly one of the funniest comedies ever made. Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis in drag: funny, because they’re hating every minute of it… until they actually start getting into it. Funny, because Lemmon wants to get more than chummy with singer Marilyn Monroe, but has to keep repeating this mantra to himself: “I’m a girl… I’m a girl…”
In short, in the old days, it was funny to make fun of the notion of men slipping on women’s clothes. Subversively, it was also funny to suggest that those same men might be learning something about how the “other half” lives when they slip on the high heels.
Not so funny, though, when J. Edgar Hoover does it.
Leading Ladies is funny in the way that a Three’s Company marathon is funny. (Or maybe Bosom Buddies, Tom Hanks’ old ‘80s sitcom about two guys pretending to be girls to — get this — pay cheaper rent at a girls’ boarding house.) Anyway, Ludwig’s play has got the slapstick timing of either of those sitcoms, with situations ratcheting up as two would-be Shakespearean actors — Leo Clark and Jack Gable, played hysterically well by Brit James Stacey and Topper Fabregas — read about a $3 million fortune available to two missing nieces, Stephanie and Maxine, and decide to impersonate their way into a fortune.
Complications arise as they mistakenly believe the missing relatives (“Steve” and “Max” as the newspaper headline calls them) are dudes. Nope, they’re ladies. And before you can say “Mrs. Doubtfire,” the two are donning female stage clothes and trying to hustle their way into the inheritance.
Enter Meg and Audrey, two winsome ladies who steal the hearts of the two roguish actors before they can get their hands on a penny.
Meg (pretty Cris Villonco), niece to elderly aunt Florence, is engaged to Reverend Duncan (Jamie Wilson), an unromantic, penny-pinching religious type who won’t even buy his fiancée a proper ring. Leo meets up with roller-skate girl Audrey (sexy Giannina Ocampo) who’s a yaya to Florence and they all screwball their way through a nonstop avalanche of costume changes and gender reversals that ends well, with everyone properly gender-assigned and appropriately dressed.
It’s curious that contempo playwright Ludwig — who first staged Leading Ladies in 2004 — turns to an era when the subject of sexual orientation wasn’t so much greeted with hatred as not openly discussed at all. Apparently he sets most of his plays (Moon Over Buffalo, Shakespeare in Hollywood) in earlier times — not so much avoiding the complications of modern life, as ironically commenting on them. Still, you won’t find a huge amount of depth in his plays. They’re about as weighty as Bar Refaeli’s thong. But they’re good for no-brainer laughs, like you would expect from any vintage Three’s Company episode.
Pulling the whole thing together is Michael Williams’ clear staging and direction and star turns from Stacey and Fabregas. They really spin it for all its worth — the double entendres, the quick changes, the mistaken identities and one-liners. Not hard at all when you have Villonco and Ocampo to play off of. Villonco shows a real knack for playing characters from earlier, less-cynical days, as she did in Stephen Sondheim’s A Little Night Music. Her wide-eyed unaffectedness is perfect for screwball comedy. And Ocampo (sporting a very impressive pair of, er, rollerskates) gets to step out as a wised-up dolly who’s, gee, just looking for the right guy to propose to her.
Yes, those were uncomplicated times. But the play is slightly complicated when Clark and Gable have to try to woo their respective ladies while in drag, plus the fact that Rev. Duncan is trying to unmask them as phonies at every turn. There’s even a hint — just the slightest soupçon — of lesbian attraction between Meg and “Maxine” in one scene. Talk about postmodern.
For a play I didn’t expect to enjoy much, Leading Ladies was a surprise: a fun and frothy farce, with little or no social commentary to get in the way of rapid-fire patter. And no Abba songs to get stuck in your head, either.