Psycho Beach Party: Little Theatre of Savannah

Sun! Surf! Tans! Trannies! These are the hallmark's of Charles Busch's ode to camp, Psycho Beach Party. And yet, most of these elements are, quite simply, missing from the Little Theatre of Savannah's production of the above. The unfortunate problem to a show is that it can matter very little how hard one tries, but that if there is not a basic understanding of fundamentals, indeed of what the show is even about, success can hardly be assured.

To begin with, this show lacks one of the most basic hallmarks of Charles Busch's work. Director Jeroy Hannah has managed to put together an entire production without one single whiff of transvestitism, something for which Mr. Busch was well known. Indeed, Busch played the lead role of Chicklet in the inaugural stage production. Yet, one can see very little of this aesthetic in this production.

At the end of the day, one cannot help but feel that the director has, essentially, missed the point of the script in a very fundamental way. Though he writes a lengthy piece on the presence of Malibu in the "national sub-conscious," this only demonstrates all the more that there is a failure in understanding. Psycho Beach Party is a renown homage to the camp style, nothing more and nothing less. And, as Susan Sontag wrote in her essay Notes on Camp that, "Indeed the essence of Camp is its love of the unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration. And Camp is esoteric -- something of a private code, a badge of identity even, among small urban cliques." The key here is the badge of identity, and the semi-ironic enshrining of what might be bad taste. More's the pity, the playing seems to be done as straight as possible.

Unfortunately also, and perhaps due to a basic lack of real leadership, there is no real standout in terms of a cast that is generally wooden, and simply lined up along a single plane. The worst, however, is that there are member of this cast (such as Lariena Brown in The Boyfriend) that have turned in performances of high quality in the past.

Aside from a mildly amusing surfing montage and poor-taste sex joke that literally anyone could sell, there is unfortunately little recommend this production. Indeed, it comes down as proof of the idea that Camp, as an ode to bad taste, can be a great deal of fun when done well... and is punishment for shoplifting throughout the Eastern Bloc when it is done poorly.