Blogging Broadway: Legends in Drag!

Charles Busch, Whoopi Goldberg, and John Epperson in Legends (Photo: Timothy White)

At the time, it seemed like a fabulous idea: Write a play about two arch-rival, middle-aged actresses who are approached by a young and hungry producer to work together on a project that will hopefully revitalize their faded careers, then enlist two real-life stage icons to star in it. The play was Legends, the author was James Kirkwood (who had co-written the book for A Chorus Line), and the stars were Carol Channing and Mary Martin.

But though this seemingly sure-fire show played a year-long pre-Broadway tour in 1986, it never made it into New York, falling victim to the awfulness of the script and myriad other problems.

Today, the original production of Legends is remembered primarily due to Diary of a Mad Playwright, Kirkwood’s book about the fiasco. In a “history repeats itself” scenario, a 2007 touring revival of the play with Joan Collins and Linda Evans also closed before reaching Broadway, and the backstage conflict between the stars — or, at least, one version of it! — was detailed by Collins in London’s Daily Mail.

If you were to pick up a copy of Legends and read it today, your first reaction might well be, “The only way this thing could work would be if two drag queens played the leads.” That hypothesis will be tested  in a very high-profile way on Monday, March 23 at 8pm, when the super-talented John Epperson (a.k.a. “Lypsinka”) and Charles Busch co-star as Leatrice Monsee and Sylvia Glenn in a one-night only staged reading of Epperson’s adaptation of Legends at The Town Hall. A benefit for Friends in Deed, the show will also feature Bryan Batt of TV’s Mad Men in the role of the producer and the amazing Whoopi Goldberg as Sylvia’s maid, Aretha. (For more information or to order tickets, visit their website.)

I recently spoke with Epperson about this hotly anticipated event.

AfterElton.com: At the risk of asking a question with a screamingly obvious answer, what was the impetus for doing Legends with two drag queens?
John Epperson: Well, if you’ve read Diary of a Mad Playwright, you may remember that the first person James Kirkwood showed the play to was Mike Nichols, who read it and said he’d like to direct it with men playing the women. Kirkwood didn’t think that was a good idea, so he pursued the traditional production that he ended up with. That was a very unhappy production, and at the end of the book, Kirkwood basically says: “I should have listened to Mike Nichols. He was right all along. We should have done the play with men playing Sylvia and Leatrice.”

AE: The play itself is generally considered to be trash, but I’m expecting it will be a hoot in your presentation because of the casting.
JE: There are things in the play that almost make you cringe in embarrassment when you think that Mary Martin and Carol Channing had to do them. But with two men in the roles, all of that goes away, because having men in drag is already so clownish. You can get away with a lot. 

AE: How much reworking of the script have you done in your adaptation?
JE: I have not counted the percentage, but I don’t want people to think they’re going to come see the play they read and did not like, because it has been rewritten. Plus we have men playing the women, which makes a huge difference. And we have an Oscar-winner playing Aretha, which is now a bigger role.

Epperson as Joan Crawford
 

AE: My memory of Diary of a Mad Playwright is that Kirkwood didn’t realize Legends was a dog.
JE: Well, a play can change greatly in the course of a production. The first two women who did a reading of Legends were Frances Sternhagen and Eileen Heckart. They did it at The Actors’ Studio. For all you and I know, that may have been a brilliant play. By the time it reached the stage with Martin and Channing and then was published, it may have changed completely.

AE: Did you see either the original production or the Joan Collins/Linda Evans travesty?
JE: I’ve seen a bootleg, bad-angle video of some of the original. I did not see the other production at all.

AE: Did you ever meet James Kirkwood?
JE: Yes, I met him not long before he died. He saw my first Off-Broadway show, and he came backstage with friends. Later on, one of his friends told me that my show was the last theatrical event he attended.

AE: Carol Channing doesn’t receive a very flattering portrait in Diary of a Mad Playwright.
JE: Nooooo, she doesn’t. And I feel bad for her, because apparently she was hoping that the play would dispel her dumb-blonde image. I’m told she was great in it, that she really knew her way around that stage.

AE: Gary Beach played the producer opposite Martin and Channing. Have you spoken with him about the experience?
JE: A little bit. I had lunch with him once. There had been a rumor that he might direct the play sometime. I asked him about that, and he said, “Well, if I ever do it, I want two real legends.” So I thought, “That leaves me out!”

AE: Can audiences expect the Town Hall performance to be an out-and-out camp fest, or will there be another level to it?
JE: I don’t like the word “camp.” I find it limiting, and I’m so sick of it.

AE: Well, I think people have very different ideas of what the word means.
JE: Yes, and perhaps its definition has changed since Susan Sontag tried to define it originally. What fascinates me about Legends is the idea that stars are creations. When Liza Minnelli was interviewed on TV recently, she said that Fred Ebb had created Liza, and she implied that she was now ready to leave that person behind, if only in her personal life. There’s a book about Joan Crawford that was written by a man who befriended her in her later years. He wrote about how she began to realize that she wasn’t Mildred Pierce, she wasn’t the image of Joan Crawford that everyone had, and she wanted to find out who she really was.

AE: It strikes me that you and Charles Busch could play either role in Legends. How did you decide who would play whom?
JE: I like Leatrice because she has a dark side that isn’t immediately apparent. The two women are sort of archetypes. Leatrice is like Loretta Young, an iron butterfly. People say that Sylvia is like Joan Crawford, but I don’t see her that way; Crawford was never that funny and, as far as we know, never particularly acerbic. I think Sylvia is more like Bea Arthur in terms of her personality, a good-hearted liberal with a salty tongue.

AE: Might there be a further life for your version of Legends after the 23^rd?
JE: I don’t know if Charles is interested in doing it for more than one night. If we were to have a commercial production, my fantasy would be for us to alternate in the roles. But that’s all way down the line. As they say in AA — which I’ve never been to! — we’re taking it one day at a time.