Theatre in Review: Make Me Gorgeous! (Playhouse 46)

	Wade McCollum. Photo: Maria Baranova

"Life, am I right?" So says Wade McCollum, his head wrapped in a scarf, his face obscured by movie-star sunglasses, the very picture of ennui; when an actor gets a laugh on the first line, you suspect you're in good hands. In this case, you're right: McCollum is starring in a new solo show that resurrects the life and wild times of the LGBTQ pioneer Kenneth Marlowe. Sometimes billed as "the world's most famous twilight male," Marlowe led a wildly checkered career until 1975, when, encouraged by the experiences of a certain Christine Jorgensen, he made the big surgical leap, re-emerging as Kate. Make Me Gorgeous, created by the one-named playwright and director Donnie, focuses mostly on Marlowe's earlier years, when notoriety attached itself to him like Scotch tape. It's quite a slice of queer history and it tells you plenty about how far we've come.

Born in Iowa in 1926, Marlowe says he was innately drawn to feminine clothes, to the amusement of his female relatives; in high school, he sneaks out of the house on Saturday nights, running around in drag. (He also cuts a wide swath through the balcony of his local cinema, populated by men with little or no interest in film.) When his unloving father takes off for parts unknown, his boozing mother packs Marlowe off to relatives in California. Despite an early devotion to Sunday churchgoing, he is soon cruising downtown Los Angeles, hanging out with transgender prostitutes, and picking up a grotesquely unattractive sugar daddy who spirits him off to Long Beach, keeping him in pretty things and mad money. Nevertheless, Marlowe escapes to Chicago, where, fooling around in drag at the gambling den where works, he captivates a talent agent who books him as a stripper in Calumet City, the Midwest's official den of sin. Billed as "Mr. Keni Marlo, Exotic Queen of the Boys," he becomes the toast of the tawdry town. (On another day, we will wonder how a man impersonating a female ecdysiast had a smashing success in the late 1940s. In the heartland. In front of straight audiences. America, you never fail to amaze.)

But when Marlowe realizes that he is the virtual prisoner of his mobbed-up boss, he hops a train to Louisiana, where he finds success recreating Sally Rand's famed fan dance. When the club where he performs burns down -- Marlowe was involved in so many conflagrations it's a wonder he wasn't a permanent person of fire department interest -- he ends up as the in-house hairdresser at a bordello, servicing the customers in his free time. He ultimately returns to LA where he minds the coiffures of Phyllis Diller, Lucille Ball, and Gypsy Rose Lee, among others. He also has a side gig, which provides him with the title of his memoir, Mr. Madam: Confessions of a Male Madam. "Have I ever told you about me being a mortician's assistant?" he asks, ticking off yet another outré entry in his resume.

These are just the bare details of a picaresque life that often reads like Candide crossed with Fanny Hill, the lusty, lubricious adventures of a gay naif from the provinces who makes a living by doing what comes naturally. McCollum is the production's secret weapon: A tall, toned figure with an equine face and big ears that nicely show off earrings, he can rearrange his handsome features into a cartoon sketch, assuming a pop-eyed grimace that recalls Joan Crawford looking for her axe in Strait-Jacket. Draping himself like a satin wrap across Walt Spangler's pink-and-white set, he addresses us in a contented-cat purr accompanied by the most knowing of looks, a technique that puts some snap into even the weakest laugh line. Talking about his early days working the streets, he says, "I liked that men paid to have sex with me. And those who appealed to me usually didn't have any money...so I did a lotta pro-bono work." Amused at the fulminations of a judgmental cop, he murmurs, "Straight people," as if discussing an exotic, undiscovered tribe. And he delights in ticking off the list of his published works, which include Cathouse Mother, Male Oral Love, and Around the World with Kenneth Marlowe, which, something tells me, isn't a travel guide.

Using his remarkably flexible vocal instrument, McCollum calls up all sorts of characters, including the motherly streetwalker Candy, the grande dame brothel-keeper Madame Sue, and Marlowe's clueless high-school friend Dick. He recreates a couple of strip routines, offers a lively tutorial in the use of handkerchiefs as sexual signals, and rattles the theatre's foundations, gorgeously belting out a number Marlowe wrote with the jazz pianist Reggie DuValle. Singing, stripping, and hilariously vamping an unsuspecting male in the audience, McCollum is the hardest-working woman in show business.

There's a big if, however; even with his considerable skills, McCollum can't keep Make Me Gorgeous! from succumbing to a touch of dullness in its later passages. The show paints Marlowe as a triumphant survivor of an oppressive time, a point that is hard to argue with. But his is a relentlessly tawdry tale, spiced with repetitious one-liners, some of which have been working the street for decades. The script never manages to make anything poignant out of his horrendous family life and the one starkly dramatic sequence, an ugly gangbang that gets him, the victim, thrown out of the Army, feels jarringly out of place. (Weirdly, the jacket copy for one of his books says, "He was raped by fourteen men in his barracks -- and enjoyed it!" That tells you something about how tightly he wore a mask in life.) And if he ever had a romantic relationship that lasted more than a night, we don't hear about it. Even at a fast, flashy ninety minutes, Marlowe becomes rather tiresome company.

Still, the other design elements, including Jeffrey Hinshaw's costumes (those stripper outfits!), Jamie Roderick's lighting, and ien DeNio's sound are all solid. And there always seems to be room in town for a show like this, whether for young queer audiences looking for a history lesson or out-of-towners seeking a "naughty" experience. I imagine it is probably best enjoyed after a cocktail or three. And, playing the ultimate in impersonators, McCollum is -- you can be sure -- the real thing. --David Barbour