Pearls Over Shanghai
About This Show:
NOTE: Once on-line ticket sales have ended (at 6 PM on the day of a performance), please call 415-377-4202 to check on ticket availability and reservations.
About SEATING OPTIONS at Thrillpeddlers' Hypnodrome:
Our intimate venue seats only forty-five guests, so we do recommend purchasing your tickets in advance. "General Admission" seats are filled on a first-come basis and we A encourage patrons to arrive early (the doors open at 7:30 pm). For couples seeking privacy and an extra jolt during the "Pearls Over Shanghai" blackout "OPIUM TRIP," the Hypnodrome's signature "Shock Box" seats are well worth the higher ticket price of $69 per couple. Winner of SF Weekly's "Best of San Francisco 2008" Award for "Best Bonus Theater Experience" Hypnodrome's "interactive audience-invading" Shock Boxes are themed loveseats (Heaven and Hell, The Pharaoh's Tomb, and The Asylum of Shock), that offer the same opportunity for illicit trysting that was once a feature of the Parisian Theatre du Grand Guignol - thanks to a sheer curtain that can be drawn to conceal the goings on inside each private booth. A "Shock Box" couple can see the show, but the show cant see them! In our "Turkish Lounge" for two, couples may bask in decadent languor and kick back among oriental carpets and silken pillows while enjoying the show.
About PEARLS OVER SHANGHAI:
Thrillpeddlers proudly presents the second production of their 2009 season, Pearls Over Shanghai, an original musical by Link Martin and Richard Scrumbly Koldewyn. This show is the centerpiece of our second annual Theatre of the Ridiculous Revival, and will mark the 40th anniversary of the formation of The Cockettes, a gender-bending theatrical troupe who not only originated this show, but also exerted a profound influence on the culture of our times, from the phenomenon of midnight movies to glitter rock stars and their outrageous fashions.
Based loosely on John Colton's scandalous 1926 Broadway play The Shanghai Gesture (later transformed into a deliriously decadent art deco film noir by Josef von Sternberg in 1941), Pearls Over Shanghai is a comic mock-operetta about white slavery and miscegenation set in the colorful world of 1937 Shanghai, China. Link Martin parts the bamboo curtain, his politics swept aside by his love of the mystery and intrigue of the Orient. Placing his story at the crossroads of good and evil, his exotic old sin town is filled with singing sailors, witty whores, foolish immortals, handmaidens and henchmen, all taking their places in streets teeming with a mix of foreign aristocrats, opium addicts, and gangland slave-trade czars
Originally produced as a Nocturnal Dream Show and performed at midnight at the old Palace Theatre in Chinatown, Pearls Over Shanghai was the fabled and fabulous Cockettes first and best original showpiece. This musical became the crown jewel of The Cockettes' repertoire, enjoying three revivals in two years, including a notorious and infamous run at New Yorks Anderson Theatre in 1971.
Although Pearls Over Shanghai had long been germinating in the fertile mind of Link Martin, it struck the trend-setting, gender-bending theatrical troupe as extremely fortuitous when the real Peking Opera played the same stage at the Palace Theatre. At the time, much was made over a missing trunk of sequined kimonos and props that seemed to vanish. However, the items were not lost and did reappear, some months later, spawning Pearls Over Shanghai Two, Three, and Four. For the Thrillpeddlers' production, original Cockettes Tahara and Billy Bowers will lend their considerable talents to our resident costume mistress Kara Emry in order to create original designs reminiscent of the opulent 1930s Orient as well as the psychedelic splendor of 1960s San Francisco.
Stage Director for Pearls Over Shanghai is Russell Blackwood, and original Cockette and composer Richard Scrumbly Koldewyn will serve as Musical Director. The cast will include original Cockette Rumi Missabu reprising his role as the evil Madame Gin Sling. Connie Champagne, Katya Smirnoff-Skyy, and Leanne Borghesi will alternate in the role of Petrushka, first created by disco diva Sylvester in the original productions. With a supporting cast of twenty, costumes a-plenty, and a score of some two dozen songs, this production promises to be the most eye-popping and toe-tapping in The Hypnodrome's history, with the scent of intoxicating perfume, poisonous flowers, opium, and sex oozing from every scene.
Website: http://www.thrillpeddlers.com
Work on this show?
Edit this info.
| (Report this)
THE HYPNODROME
575 10th StreetSan Francisco,CA,94103
Begins: 01/01/1900
Ends: 08/01/2010
GET TICKETS
Buzz about this show
-
08/02/2009
I was unaware of this show until the tickets fell into my lap, so I had no preparation for what I was getting into until the lights went up... I'm no stranger to the Hypnodrome's theatrics, and I wasn't disappointed with PEARLS... for the most part, I enjoyed it for what it was. But I suppose, where the wires were crossed for me, was in the huge cast and not enough stage time for characters that I either connected with, or just wanted to see. In particular, the Asian-homeless woman (named Lily, I believe.) I also didn't think the usual Hypnodrome blackout worked well in the piece, and I would have loved to see the show with that element negated.
Artistically, it was completely awesome and I was completely impressed with the make-up. The set's were almost non-existent except for a few Chinese lanterns and some wallscrolls (and one very shiny throne...)
If you like glitz and glam, definitely spend the money on this show. -
08/01/2009
I mean it as a compliment when I say that, in my opinion, the work put out by the Hypnodrome is best appreciated as college theater in Hell. As long as you expect to be neither intellectually challenged or emotionally invested, the Thrillpeddlers provide a consistently well-executed product whose core is generally obscure, somewhat dusty, usually vapid museum pieces that, given the company's yen for gore and sex, save them from being ACT and elevate them to an "edgier" status. So long as you're not looking for innovative new work or resplendently revitalized masterpieces they are quaint and fun.
The current offering is a good example of this and also their most ambitious show I've seen to date: the musical revue masquerading as a script known as "Pearls over Shangai", originally staged by the infamous Cockettes. A sort of Cole Porter musical sans the white gloves (and the genius) it provides a thin plot and thinner characters, but more than one enjoyable song, some witty lyrics and occasionally astute jokes. Though warned ahead of time by the pianist that it will also contain a number of un-PC racial slurs and premises, the show is far too ridiculous to be offensive unless you're astoundingly sensitive. What is surprising is both the lack of gore, considering the production company in question, and also how amazingly tame the sex is: even when male genitalia and female breasts are wagging around on stage it all seems kind of charming and cute- like playing spin the bottle.
Still, they manage to pull it off despite the flaws in the material. Certainly some credit for this goes to the adept directing of Russell Blackwood and Leanne Borghesi, who keep the show moving at a quick pace and never make any tonal or thematic missteps. Additionally the show is beautifully realized on a technical front, especially for a small company, with gorgeous costumes and makeup by Kara Emry, Louise Jarmilowiez, Tahara and Melanie Paulina, and a delightfully spooky opium trip that will effectively convince most people to never do drugs. But the real strength lies in the actors, who are across the board fully committed to the piece and the world where it takes place. Even the handful that aren't terribly good are terribly convincing and in a show like this that matters more.
Some particularly stand out and at the front of the list is Eric Tyson Wertz, whose portrayal of a maidenly street vendor is surprisingly delicate, emotionally evocative, and best channels the glory and power of the Peking Opera that is source material for the show. That Steven Satyricon, as his love interest, is not as compelling is unfortunate but no more so than the fact that neither actor gets much in the way of stage time- but then no character really does in the show- the downside of each one really just being an excuse or a song or a joke (betraying the show's revue roots). Still, that's not the actors' fault and Satyricon holds his own while Wertz, who is also the best singer amongst the men, transcends to something quite real; between the two of them Shanghai has leads, more or less, and also, surprisingly, a heart.
Additional standouts include Michael Soldier, who plays his role as an Asian thug with a great deal of relish and some pretty impressive craft- every facial expression and movement poised and chosen, the whole miraculously charismatic. TJ Ladies and Gentleman (yes, you read that right) and Kim Larsen also give memorable turns as criminals working the white slave trade, playing their outlandish characters (and costumes) to the hilt and knowing just when to draw the line before teetering into banality. The women in the show have very little to do (all the principal female characters are played by men in drag) but ironically standout for the better because of it: Adeola Role and Liza Bouterage have great voices and so you really wish they had more to sing; Kara Emry looks so startlingly hot in her costume one can't help but think: this is the danger of putting a real woman next to a drag queen; if the woman is as smokin' hot as Emry is, she's going to blow any drag queen, no matter how glamorous, out of the water.
But part of what always makes the Hypnodrome fun is that it allows for equal opportunity glam, and in this show more so than ever: men and women, old and young, gorgeous and plain, adept and amateur are all put onstage together under an undeniably shiny veneer of glitz and, thanks to that thin script, each is also give their moment- and just the one, usually- to shine as best they can, dusty material aside. Just like college, really. Well, college with opium hallucinations and drag queens and musical numbers about masturbation. You know, college in Hell.
Add buzz for Pearls Over Shanghai
