"Candy and Dorothy"

Review: Play's West Coast premiere is a seriocomic take on an altruist and a drag queen.

By ERIC MARCHESE
Special to the Register

Could there be two women more different than Dorothy Day and Candy Darling? Day was not only a co-founder of the Catholic Worker organization, but also a social activist, pacifist, poet, journalist and author who lived into her early 80s. Darling was a drag queen who became a superstar in Andy Warhol's innovative sexploitation films of the 1960s and '70s - films such as "Flesh" and "Women in Revolt" - and who died of leukemia at age 30.

From 2000, David Johnston's play "Candy and Dorothy" looks at the lives - and afterlives - of these two night- and-day personalities. Much of the time, the contrasts are played for laughs, but Johnston, who gave his script an overhaul earlier this year, is digging for something deeper, trying to find poignant aspects either in the outrageous contrasts between Candy and Dorothy or in the faint possibility that the spirits of a straight-laced eightysomething do-gooder and a 30- year-old transvestite might actually find some common ground.

Johnston's revised script is an uneven blend of comedy and drama, but in Rude Guerrilla Theater Company's staging at the Empire Theater in Santa Ana, the play's West Coast premiere, director Sharyn Case and her cast focus on the bittersweet, punching across laughs and thought- provoking concepts. Case isn't especially adept at comedy - her forte has always been hard-hitting drama. In the hands of similar directors, this material would have bogged down and become dreary and preachy, while Case handles the text's bumpy dual nature reasonably well.

The laughs aren't consistent, the comedic timing is off a shade here and there, and scenes that might have elicited bigger laughs simmer but don't explode. This show's laughs are of the more thoughtful kind, while the drama is unconventional - and both grow out of a confluence of the bizarre and the mundane.

The bizarre are the aforementioned afterlives of Dorothy (Mary Ann Strossner) and Candy (Rude G veteran Jay Michael Fraley in full female regalia and eyelash-batting mode). The mundane - and the plot device linking these two unlikely figures - is the life of Tamara (Jenn Carnett), a twentysomething who, in "Looking for Mr. Goodbar" fashion, escapes the boredom of her library job through orgies of alcohol, drugs and meaningless sex. Can the spirit of Dorothy Day convince Tamara that her life is spinning out of control? And can the spirit of Candy Darling convince Dorothy that a young woman should be allowed to blow off steam when she needs to?

Driving this staging are the performances of Strossner and Fraley. Strossner delivers a fervent Dorothy Day who is self-serious without being tiresome, self-righteous without being pedantic - more than just a humanitarian, she's an altruist who renounces vices such as greed and pride. With a lofty, educated voice reminiscent of Julie Harris, Strossner creates a wizened old Day who glows with wisdom gained over years of painful experience we later learn includes alcohol and promiscuous sex.

Fraley combines the stereotype of the obviously gay male in drag and that of a man so feminine you can't believe your eyes. His Candy is clearly a man, yet one so steeped in femininity that the illusion is complete (themakeup design by Lisa Monette and Hunter goes a long way here). Fraley is wispy and delicate in Marilyn Monroe fashion, gradually revealing the sensitivity and vulnerability beneath Candy's outer gaiety.

Fraley and Strossner don't have actual chemistry - too much of a mesh would have lessened the tension between their characters. Johnston makes his point that the two are worlds apart, then meanders. In the afterlife, Candy is forced to lecture on 1930s social and political upheavals, Dorothy on the topic of Andy Warhol and "queer cinema," a scene that pointedly illustrates each woman's ignorance of the other's world. Late in the play, it's clear Candy and Dorothy have become friends, but unclear how the friendship developed. There's no gradual progression and one mild breakthrough scene. The epilogue is brilliant - Candy and Dorothy have been put back on Earth with no memories of having already met and clashed - but robbed by what leads up to it.

The focus on Tamara and her gradual redemption isn't much better: The character's mistrust of organized religion and preoccupation with the afterlife resonate nicely, but Johnston's writing doesn't tie things together. Where a fierce, feisty persona is needed, Carnett projects one that's lackluster and watered- down, undermining the comic and dramatic tension of her scenes.

Alex Dorman is a likable foil for Tamara as Sid, the bartender she picks up and uses only for casual sex and who tries to make their connection more meaningful. Dorman shows Sid's quiet desperation and the intellect he keeps hidden behind his easygoing facade. As the Voice (of God, presumably), Alexander Rodriguez speaks his lines with light, clear diction, in gentle tones, and, as Tamara's shrink, lends a skeptical air of chuckling self-satisfaction.
Freelance writer Eric Marchese has covered entertainment for the Register since 1984. CONTACT US: emarchesewriter@aol.com

It’s going to get worse. Soon Tamara (Jenn Carnett) gets two very interesting supernatural visitors from the afterlife: Dorothy Day (Mary Ann Strossner), the rabble-rousing founder of the Catholic Worker Movement, and Candy Darling (Jay Michael Fraley), a transvestite actor who worked in Andy Warhol’s stable. In a surreal riff on Clarence from It’s a Wonderful Life, these otherworldly apparitions have been sent to Earth in order to rescue Tamara from the train wreck of her life.

That’s the highly intriguing setup to New York-based playwright David Johnston
’s Candy and Dorothy, receiving its West Coast premiere courtesy of the Santa Ana-based Rude Guerrilla Theatre Company—which is once again stretching out
and producing a playwright mostly unfamiliar to local ears and eyes. Based on C&D, Johnston is exactly what contemporary theater needs: funny, irreverent, smart, sincere, politicized and capable of huge artistic gambles. The very idea of putting Day, a patron saint to the American Religious Left, in the same universe as Candy Darling (whose greatest claim to fame proved not to be the films she made as part of Warhol’s Factory but the reference Lou Reed makes to her in "Walk on the Wild Side") is such a ludicrous coupling that, once imagined, it would be sinful not to follow through.

Unfortunately for Johnston, his play and the audience, the execution of this piece just about kills it. Sharyn Case directs the play with all the grace and fluidity of a sumo wrestler trying to tap-dance. It’s clumsy and inarticulate and halfway through the first act I was dying to turn on my mMode and see how the Dodgers were doing in San Francisco. This is a play that does operate on a lofty road—don’t throw your life away, love your work and the moment—but there’s also sex and drugs and rock ‘n’ roll and transvestites. So the production’s lack of energy makes the whole thing highly disappointing. The script seems to scream for pedal-to-the-metal pacing changed up with sudden, brake-slamming moments of sobriety. But this one moves at a snail’s pace (do we really need a five-minute recorded song before the play starts, or sloppy scene change after sloppy scene change?) and that impedes everything: the great concept, the decent work by the ensemble cast, the playwright’s progressive political subtext, the story itself.

Now, with that said, one must give all props to Fraley for his performance a Candy Darling. Fraley is a Rude Guerrilla stalwart; in his time, he has played Satan, ass-licking junkies, psychotic mental hospital wardens, prim and proper child molesters, arctic explorers and everything in between. But not until I glanced at my program in the second act (because I was bored and my mind was wandering) did I realize that he was the guy playing the ultra-femme Candy Darling. Now, he can finally add neurotic transvestite to one of the most impressive résumés in OC theater.

Candy and Dorothy plays at the Empire Theater, 200 N. Broadway, Santa Ana,
(714) 547-4688. Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 2:30 p.m. Also, Thurs., Oct. 7. Thru
Oct. 9. $12-$15.