machine gun mccain
"Watch out for the old man," Curt Branom said gleefully, sweeping past Nancy Pelosi and John Travolta as he headed to the stage of "Beach Blanket Babylon" wearing big white hair and a medal-cover ed purple smoking jacket.
The flats flew open and the crowd cracked up at the sight of cranky John McCain, singing "Johnny B. Goode" in a shtick-filled number with silver-domed Bill Clinton, a ridiculously buffed Governor Arnold and other satirized pols. Backstage at "BBB" - the perennial San Francisco treat that's celebrating its 35th year - another and equally entertaining show was unfolding with the same happy madness.
Tall Ellen Toscano plucked off her big brown Pelosi wig and tossed it to props manager Bob Memmo, a meticulous man who sets up the fast and endless stream of costume changes choreographed in very close quarters. He'd just helped 22-year veteran Renée Lubin - the sensational soul singer who morphs from Tina Turner to Oprah to Beyoncé and the all-blue lady who pops out on a lion's tongue - plop on her waxy block of a Michelle Obama wig ("Ready with the wig," he said with the pleasant cool of a NASA control guy).
A few feet away, in a 25-by-15-foot space filled with towering fruit bonnets and wigs the size of shrubs, costumer Ty Yamaguchi was helping Toscano yank off the black leather pants she wore for Pelosi's "Leader of the Pack" number and into her Sarah Palin glasses and suit, accessorized with a rather large pistol. (Toscano also makes hay with Britney Spears and a stumbling cameo by Amy Winehouse with a big bag of crystal meth on her head and a double-jumbo bottle of Jack Daniels in her hand.)
At the same time, Doug Magpiong, who plays Arnold and Elvis and shares the dancing poodles and Hassids numbers with Paulino Durán and Ryan Rigazzi, was putting on his Travolta shades. Durán stripped down to his red bikini, strung gold medals around his neck, grabbed a giant bong, drew smoke from some theatrical cigarette device and got poised to pounce onstage.
"Total method acting," joked Durán, who, like the others, seemed to be having a ball on both sides of the curtain.
"Welcome to the craziness," said Show White, one of the original characters that the late Steve Silver built into the flexible structure of this machine-gun-speed, old-school vaudeville, quintessentially San Francisco show. He was the wizardly artist and producer who created the show for a laugh in 1974 - it opened June 7 that year in the back room of the Savoy Tivoli - never suspecting that the sublimely silly stuff he'd been cooking up on the streets of San Francisco would turn into America's longest-running musical revue.
Snow, whose international hunt for a prince provides the spine of a show that changes with the news, has been played for five years by Shawna Ferris, a UC Irvine music theater grad who eventually sheds her Disney frock for Madonna's pointy cone bra .
"I love to be onstage here, and watching all these crazy people I work with," Ferris said. "It's a blast." Val Diamond had slipped off her Italian chef costume from the opening "Mambo Italiano" number and got ready to go back out as the old French whore. A big-voice singer and gifted comedian, Diamond joined Silver's merry band 31 years ago and has played many parts - her Jewish mother routine, with its comic cantorial chanting, is as memorable as her wrenching rendition of Burt Bacharach's "Anyone Who Had a Heart" - and worn many humongous hats. She likes the lusty Gallic gal best.
"This crusty old French whore. What's not to like?" Diamond said with a laugh. "If we were doing 'Macbeth,' I might have a little trouble after 30 years. But this show is just so silly. It's fun." Stage manager John Camajani has been with the show as long as Diamond. He's a big, good-humored man who was alternately yanking open flats and closing curtains, handing off mikes and tossing wigs and props to Memmo as they came offstage.
"Because of all the real fast changes the crew does with the cast, everything has to be in the right place at the right time," Camajani said. "The Velcro has to stick. The buttons have to snap." He has yet to tire of the mayhem. "I just love the atmosphere. These kids keep me young. They keep me feeling up." They have the same effect on audiences, who keep the place packed, seven performances a week, even in the midst of a recession. Tourists come and so do locals, curious to see what new characters are being spoofed and hungry for what the show's longtime director, Kenny Mazlow, calls pure entertainment.
"It just keeps changing and evolving," said producer Jo Schuman Silver, who kept the show bubbling along after her husband died of complications from AIDS in 1995. The show's popping rhythm - things come and go in a flash, so if you didn't like or get that, how 'bout this? - was set by Steve Silver, who got bored easily.
"It's faster than ever," Schuman Silver said backstage after the rousing "San Francisco" finale. "If Steve were around today, this is how the show would be. Now it's quicker than ever, because that's how the world is today." She and Mazlow stay on top of the news and are constantly adding new bits that keep things current. They work with Music Director Bill Keck to find the song that fits. If the bit flies with the audience, it's in, if not, it's gone.
The bathroom-stall Sen. Larry Craig is still in the show, along with Hillary, Martha Stewart, a hilariously long-nailed Barbra Streisand and the Octomom. Caitlin McGinty plays those ladies and Craig is done by Branom, a one-time accountant who has appeared on and off in "BBB" since '94.
"I play all the nasty old white Republicans," said Branom, who was wearing Craig's "I'm Not Gay" T-shirt beneath the absurdly regal, pink-poodle-wigged outfit he wears as foppish King Louis XIV. While Craig was onstage singing "I Will Survive" in blue boxers, Phillip Percy Williams was donning his dandy Oil of Olé Latin lover threads. After a quick appearance, he dashed backstage to get into his witch doctor garb for the Jewish number. ("No, a RICH doctor," Diamond's yenta tells Snow White).
Memmo and Yamaguchi helped Williams put on a 50-pound, bone-bearing Afro. "Witch doctor comin' in," Memmo announced as Williams gracefully sailed backstage without bumping into anybody. Off came the Afro and grass skirt, with its excitable banana, and Williams, who plays James Brown and Barack Obama, jumped into his Tiger Woods attire, put a golf trophy on his head, grabbed the club proffered by Camajani and hit the stage.
As the finale approached, Diamond was helped into a metal harness that supports the trademark 300-pound San Francisco cityscape hat she wears.
"It's against human nature to be wearing something like this, but you do it," she said with affection.
Branom, who swears his curly black Jonas Brothers wig makes him look like Gilda Radner's Roseanne Rosannadanna, explained why this dizzying show is still a gas.
"It's spontaneous, it's real, you feel that something new could happen every night," he said." It's a great job. You have your days free and you have nights doing this, playing with some of your best friends. What could be better?" {sbox}
Beach Blanket Babylon plays at 8 p.m. Wed.-Thurs., 6:30 p.m. Fri., 6:30 and
Tall Ellen Toscano plucked off her big brown Pelosi wig and tossed it to props manager Bob Memmo, a meticulous man who sets up the fast and endless stream of costume changes choreographed in very close quarters. He'd just helped 22-year veteran Renée Lubin - the sensational soul singer who morphs from Tina Turner to Oprah to Beyoncé and the all-blue lady who pops out on a lion's tongue - plop on her waxy block of a Michelle Obama wig ("Ready with the wig," he said with the pleasant cool of a NASA control guy).
A few feet away, in a 25-by-15-foot space filled with towering fruit bonnets and wigs the size of shrubs, costumer Ty Yamaguchi was helping Toscano yank off the black leather pants she wore for Pelosi's "Leader of the Pack" number and into her Sarah Palin glasses and suit, accessorized with a rather large pistol. (Toscano also makes hay with Britney Spears and a stumbling cameo by Amy Winehouse with a big bag of crystal meth on her head and a double-jumbo bottle of Jack Daniels in her hand.)
At the same time, Doug Magpiong, who plays Arnold and Elvis and shares the dancing poodles and Hassids numbers with Paulino Durán and Ryan Rigazzi, was putting on his Travolta shades. Durán stripped down to his red bikini, strung gold medals around his neck, grabbed a giant bong, drew smoke from some theatrical cigarette device and got poised to pounce onstage.
"Total method acting," joked Durán, who, like the others, seemed to be having a ball on both sides of the curtain.
"Welcome to the craziness," said Show White, one of the original characters that the late Steve Silver built into the flexible structure of this machine-gun-speed, old-school vaudeville, quintessentially San Francisco show. He was the wizardly artist and producer who created the show for a laugh in 1974 - it opened June 7 that year in the back room of the Savoy Tivoli - never suspecting that the sublimely silly stuff he'd been cooking up on the streets of San Francisco would turn into America's longest-running musical revue.
Snow, whose international hunt for a prince provides the spine of a show that changes with the news, has been played for five years by Shawna Ferris, a UC Irvine music theater grad who eventually sheds her Disney frock for Madonna's pointy cone bra .
"I love to be onstage here, and watching all these crazy people I work with," Ferris said. "It's a blast." Val Diamond had slipped off her Italian chef costume from the opening "Mambo Italiano" number and got ready to go back out as the old French whore. A big-voice singer and gifted comedian, Diamond joined Silver's merry band 31 years ago and has played many parts - her Jewish mother routine, with its comic cantorial chanting, is as memorable as her wrenching rendition of Burt Bacharach's "Anyone Who Had a Heart" - and worn many humongous hats. She likes the lusty Gallic gal best.
"This crusty old French whore. What's not to like?" Diamond said with a laugh. "If we were doing 'Macbeth,' I might have a little trouble after 30 years. But this show is just so silly. It's fun." Stage manager John Camajani has been with the show as long as Diamond. He's a big, good-humored man who was alternately yanking open flats and closing curtains, handing off mikes and tossing wigs and props to Memmo as they came offstage.
"Because of all the real fast changes the crew does with the cast, everything has to be in the right place at the right time," Camajani said. "The Velcro has to stick. The buttons have to snap." He has yet to tire of the mayhem. "I just love the atmosphere. These kids keep me young. They keep me feeling up." They have the same effect on audiences, who keep the place packed, seven performances a week, even in the midst of a recession. Tourists come and so do locals, curious to see what new characters are being spoofed and hungry for what the show's longtime director, Kenny Mazlow, calls pure entertainment.
"It just keeps changing and evolving," said producer Jo Schuman Silver, who kept the show bubbling along after her husband died of complications from AIDS in 1995. The show's popping rhythm - things come and go in a flash, so if you didn't like or get that, how 'bout this? - was set by Steve Silver, who got bored easily.
"It's faster than ever," Schuman Silver said backstage after the rousing "San Francisco" finale. "If Steve were around today, this is how the show would be. Now it's quicker than ever, because that's how the world is today." She and Mazlow stay on top of the news and are constantly adding new bits that keep things current. They work with Music Director Bill Keck to find the song that fits. If the bit flies with the audience, it's in, if not, it's gone.
The bathroom-stall Sen. Larry Craig is still in the show, along with Hillary, Martha Stewart, a hilariously long-nailed Barbra Streisand and the Octomom. Caitlin McGinty plays those ladies and Craig is done by Branom, a one-time accountant who has appeared on and off in "BBB" since '94.
"I play all the nasty old white Republicans," said Branom, who was wearing Craig's "I'm Not Gay" T-shirt beneath the absurdly regal, pink-poodle-wigged outfit he wears as foppish King Louis XIV. While Craig was onstage singing "I Will Survive" in blue boxers, Phillip Percy Williams was donning his dandy Oil of Olé Latin lover threads. After a quick appearance, he dashed backstage to get into his witch doctor garb for the Jewish number. ("No, a RICH doctor," Diamond's yenta tells Snow White).
Memmo and Yamaguchi helped Williams put on a 50-pound, bone-bearing Afro. "Witch doctor comin' in," Memmo announced as Williams gracefully sailed backstage without bumping into anybody. Off came the Afro and grass skirt, with its excitable banana, and Williams, who plays James Brown and Barack Obama, jumped into his Tiger Woods attire, put a golf trophy on his head, grabbed the club proffered by Camajani and hit the stage.
As the finale approached, Diamond was helped into a metal harness that supports the trademark 300-pound San Francisco cityscape hat she wears.
"It's against human nature to be wearing something like this, but you do it," she said with affection.
Branom, who swears his curly black Jonas Brothers wig makes him look like Gilda Radner's Roseanne Rosannadanna, explained why this dizzying show is still a gas.
"It's spontaneous, it's real, you feel that something new could happen every night," he said." It's a great job. You have your days free and you have nights doing this, playing with some of your best friends. What could be better?" {sbox}
Beach Blanket Babylon plays at 8 p.m. Wed.-Thurs., 6:30 p.m. Fri., 6:30 and
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