Charles Busch’s cult comedy “Psycho Beach Party” is coming to Out Front Theatre Company May 2-18.
“Psycho Beach Party,” which ran Off Broadway in the 1980s, is a parody of 1950s psychological thrillers, 1960s beach movies, and 1980s slasher films – a high energy, campy comedy that was later made into a film in 2000. The story follows “Chicklet” (played by Busch in the original production), a surfer girl a la Gidget who has multiple personalities and fears she may be responsible for a mysterious bout of killings in Malibu.
The production is directed by Paul Conroy, who is also the founder and producing artistic director of Out Front. Conroy has a special history with the play, which he shared in an interview before opening night.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
I hadn’t heard of this play before – I believe it was Off Broadway in 1987 – but when did you first become aware of “Psycho Beach Party?”
Paul Conroy: Well, it transferred to Off Broadway. It was actually part of a renegade theater group before that, or around that time, where they’d be performing in, like, the back rooms of bars and things like that. It gained popularity – and Charles Busch, at that time, really came into his own of writing shows – and then it moved Off Broadway.
My very first association with it was that my college did it about a year or two before I got there – so the late 90s. So maybe 10 years after it was written, I was aware of it. But then I was in a production of it in Boston in 2004. I was an actor then, and that was when I really became fully aware of it. There was a movie version in, I think it was 2000, and I may have seen it around that time. But 2004, when I was in the production, was really when I fell in love with the show.
Who were you in the 2004 production?
Conroy: Yo-Yo. So, the really energetic dumb one. [Laughs] What’s interesting about that production is that it was the first queer show that I was ever a part of. So it was an introduction to the community, as well.
We did it in February of 2004, and it was a massive, massive hit – so much that they brought it back that summer, and we were all a part of the Atlanta Pride Parade in 2004. It opened up a lot of doors for me, but also for the LGBTQIA+ community as well – being part of a show where I was a queer character, that was the first time for me. This really affirming experience then carried over to being a part of the revival five months later.
So it’s kind of coming full circle with the directing aspect of this.
Conroy: Absolutely. That’s why when I was putting things together for this season – I’ve wanted to do “Psycho Beach” for a while, and it just seemed like the right time to do it. As director and artistic director right now, I’m trying to focus more energy on escapism theater and stories that are very comedic and positive. Everyone leaving the theater just kind of has a nice, warm, happy feeling with it. “Psycho Beach” is complete [escapism], It is campy, it is funny – it is just non-stop energetic. I think audiences, both what they need and what they want right now, is just to go and say, “I can breathe, I can laugh.”
I know that a lot of that kind of inspired Charles Busch when he was writing in the 80s … It was very much in the same vein of escapism theater, because he was writing in a community during the HIV/AIDS epidemic. The LGBTQ community was dealing with all of it, and he said that he just wanted to create work that would allow people to have a moment to breathe and have a moment to laugh while all these horrible things were going on. That’s really inspiring to me, and I think that that’s where I as a director, and I as an artistic director, am focusing my energy now.
What was your vision for this production? Obviously, it’s mixing 50s thrillers, 60s beach movies, and then slasher films – that’s a lot of different genres to meld, so how did you approach that?
Conroy: It’s funny, because the thing that I keep coming back to is 1960s cartoons. Not the ones that people really think of – I was watching like, [“The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends”], the Alvin and the Chipmunks from the 60s [then called “The Alvin Show.”]. Everything in the production is very bright, it’s big, it’s very campy, it’s over the top. We’re talking about incorporating sounds, like the “Batman” series from the 60s, of the fight scenes and things like that.
I guess it’s taking even more of these genres and tropes and putting them on top of it. Because like you said, it’s the 60s teen beach movies, it’s Hitchcock thrillers. But to me, putting it in almost a cartoonish world marries it all together kind of easily, because these characters are on the borderline of being cartoons.
Are there any specific movies that are referenced in the text, or is it an amalgamation of sorts?
Conroy: The biggest movie that influenced the play is a Hitchock movie called “Marnie.” I mean, there are direct references to “Marnie” in there. There’s a couple of other Hitchcockian things. [Busch] has said he’s a very big film buff. He was not really into the 60s beach movies. So what happened was, he and his performance group would get up and do a show, and at the end of every show, he would talk about – hey, make donations, because we have this other show coming up. And he kind of just came up with a title, called [“Gidget Goes Psychotic”] … I heard him say after a year of telling people about that, someone said – you know, you probably should write this show, because you keep telling people that we’re going to do this show. So then he had to do research of the 60s teen beach movies, and that’s really what it was borne from. Then he was able to weave the cinema that he really appreciated, like the Hitchcock stuff, into the teen beach movies as well.
Yeah, because that’s what “Gidget” was, right? She wanted to be a surfer.
Conroy: “Gidget” was a TV show starring Sally Field. It was only on for a couple of seasons, but it was very like the 1960s, All-American sitcom. She lived in California with her dad and she just wanted to go to the beach and hang out and play records – that type of thing.
Even just reading a couple of interviews with Busch, you can definitely tell he’s a huge movie buff. I read somewhere, he was talking about how he loved the old movie star way of acting, not the more naturalistic stuff – he wanted it to be really out there.
Conroy: Not naturalistic at all. And he performs and did perform, he was the original Chicklet. Everything is very – it’s almost like the silent film era, of big eyes and big expressions and things like that. So we’ve tried to incorporate some of that style of acting as well with the performer playing Chicklet. You know, it’s grand gestures and things like that. So it’s really staying true to how Charles Busch first would have done it.
Speaking of the performances, I wondered if you could talk a little bit about the casting process and the cast themselves.
Conroy: It was an interesting combination. We do a lot of campy comedy shows at Out Front. It’s a genre that our audiences really gravitate towards and appreciate. So there were a couple of performers that have done campy shows with us before that I asked to be a part of this, because I wanted people that I knew were experienced with the genre. It’s a very specific type of comedy, as to how you’re doing the beats and the pacing, and things like that. But the majority of the cast, we just had open auditions. We had a very large audition pool, and we were really fortunate to get the cast that we got. I mean, every single performer has their chance to shine. They’re all hysterical. We’ve added in other opportunities – there’s a couple of choreographed numbers that we’ve added, and it stays within that 60s beach vein. There’s a chase sequence that’s a lot of fun, that we kind of expanded upon what’s in the script. I’m really excited, and the cast has really understood the assignment for lack of a better term – what is camp, and what is this genre of comedy? How do we keep the pacing and the silliness of it up? They’ve had no inhibitions at all. They just all dove in headfirst and said, I’m going to try doing the silly thing. It’s been really wonderful to work with them.
That’s good to hear. I feel like camp is so often misunderstood, or the term is misused.
Conroy: It definitely is and I think that a lot of people – directors, or companies, or actors – are afraid of camp. I think comedy is harder to do than drama. I think it’s just easier to make someone cry or feel something … but comedy, you really have to hit it. We just had a conversation in rehearsal the other night where I was saying, now look – you might do this joke, you might do this bit, and it’ll kill one night. The audience will absolutely love it, and you’ll have to stretch it out. And the next night, it’s not going to hit at all. It’s what I love about theater, is that they’re really going to have to feel the energy of the crowd and play into it to keep that momentum going with the audience the whole time.
Tickets for “Psycho Beach Party” can be purchased online.