Elaine May’s play Adult Entertainment, currently in previews in a production by The Klunch, “is pretty delightful. It’s kind of a porno Pygmalion sort of play, in terms of porn stars suddenly getting an education, and figuring out what their lives should mean. There’s a lot of nice layers to it, but, more than anything else, it’s tremendously funny.”
Over a late lunch recently at Annie’s Paramount Steak House, Joe Banno (who, it must be noted, I’ve worked with for over thirty years, and have known forever) was talking to me about the project that has brought him back to town.
The Helen Hayes Award-winning director and former Artistic Director of Source Theatre Company now calls the City of Angels home.
I began our conversation by asking him to introduce our younger readers to playwright Elaine May, who may not be as familiar to generations younger than ours.
“It’s kind of a shame that she’s maybe a bit forgotten, especially compared to Mike Nichols. They were a great comedy team during the 60s, Nichols and May — brilliant comedians, sketch comedy experts — and then they went their separate ways.
“They both became film directors. Of course, Mike Nichols [who won the Oscar for The Graduate] became a legendary film director, but Elaine May had some really wonderful films to her credit, like The Heartbreak Kid; A New Leaf. Of course, she had the renowned Hollywood disaster Ishtar, and people tend to remember that, but she’s also been a really terrific comic actress in things, right into her old age.
“If anybody has seen Woody Allen’s Small Time Crooks, she gives a brilliantly funny performance in that, and she was already well into her senior years. So she’s had a really long, varied career: as a writer, a director, a comedian, an actress, and a playwright, and her plays are actually rather good.
“This play, Adult Entertainment — I don’t for the life of me understand why it hasn’t had more of a life after its Off-Broadway production; which I saw, and it was hilarious. It’s such a great concept.
“I think, if I may go into the play a little bit, even though the play came as late as 2001, it was spoofing something that had become, for decades, a New York institution on public access cable TV, which was The Robin Byrd Show.
“It was doing a deliberate spoof of that, where Robin Byrd, a former porn star, got all her former porn star buddies on the show, and they would sit around a couch and talk about their latest projects and then, one by one, they’d get up and strip around a stripper pole. And then they’d sit down again, and they’d take call-ins, and it was the most inane conversation, but it was like watching a bus accident: you could not stop watching this show. It became very popular among Manhattanites. And all the commercials were for massage parlors and adult toy stores.”
I suggested that there were likely to be, as well, those ads one sees now on MTV late night, with nubile young women inviting you to call them up and have a chat.
“Oh, yeah, those were big,” Banno confirmed. “She started that show in 1977, and I have not gone back to see it now, but she’s still doing the show online, on her website. She must be a hundred and eight by now; but it was really something.
“But Elaine May used that as sort of a framing device: we see this cheesy public access show being shot with these porn stars and from there, we learn that they want to make a movie of their own; they want to do something that’s more artistic. It has a little bit of the Boogie Nights thing; it’s, like, ‘We want to make great art out of porn.’
“So I’m wondering if maybe it hasn’t had an artistic life after that [original Off-Broadway] production because it was seen as a very inside-New York parody — but it really isn’t. We don’t need to know that show. It’s set up immediately that we’re on some cheap cable TV thing, and that’s enough. And we’re setting it back in the 90s, which is the era that Elaine May would have most immediately been sending up.”
I observed that it’s funny for those of us who lived through them to consider something set in the 90s as a period piece.
“You and me both. I’ll tell you, when we were talking about it, I said (in spite of a couple of references in the script that maybe were 90s), ‘Well, wouldn’t we get juice out of late 70s or 80s?’ — because of the feel of early porn in those days. But generally, among our designers and the artistic director, it was felt that the 90s were just the ideal era for it.
“I hate to think I’m old enough for the 90s to have melded into the 2000s. I look back and don’t think of it as a particular era where you say, ‘Oh, those fashions — oh, my God, it’s got to be the 90s!’ But, to a lot of people, it’s ancient history. So I’m trusting that, and we’re going to go with that.”[ezcol_1third]
——–
Adult Entertainment
from The Klunch
closes March 31, 2018
Details and tickets
——–[/ezcol_1third]
I mentioned that Grease, which premiered in 1971, was closer to the 50s than we are now to the 90s.
“That’s true. That’s a very good point. It’s true: time does tend to telescope a little bit. So the 90s don’t feel all that different. Certainly there may have been a lot more spandex and big hair, but, otherwise…”
I asked if he was having a lot of fun integrating the music from that time.
“Yes, and we actually have Andrew [Lloyd] Baughman of Landless Theatre Company; he wrote the music for us, in a 90s style, because he’s also a music guy. And then Lucas Zarwell (he’s Lobster Boy) is doing our sound design, so he’s taking those tracks and he’s going to add the vocal tracks of our cast members to these songs.
“So it’s definitely got a 90s beat and a 90s feel to it, and then he’s going to be tinkering with those tracks that Andrew has created, so, yeah, we’re definitely going with that sound world, and what might have been played in the strip clubs in those days.”
Lobster Boy, by the way, is a stage persona familiar to fans of Cherry Red Productions, the precursor company to The Klunch, and I then asked how Joe Banno and The Klunch had hooked up with each other.
“When I was artistic director of Source Theatre Company, when it was still a company, before it was more of a multi-use or rental house, I used to love seeing Ian Allen’s prior company, Cherry Red Productions.
“For younger readers, again, they had a terrific run in town as the – as Ian used to get up before each show and announce – ‘Washington’s only theatre company dedicated to smut.’ And then he changed it to ‘dedicated to Jesus’ — maximum irony.
“But they would do things like Cannibal Cheerleaders on Crack, and Baked Baby, and Wife Swappers. And they were full of nudity, and bodily fluids flying around, and really campy, outrageous sensibilities, and they were enormously popular. They tended to get a big college age and twenty-something following. They kept their ticket prices very cheap, so it was very democratic — anybody could go see it.
“At a certain point, when I was at Source, I said, ‘Why don’t you come in and be our late-night theatre on the weekends?’ And they did some of their most successful shows there at Source, as the midnight show on Fridays and Saturdays.
“So I’ve known Ian for years, and we kept saying, ‘Yeah, we’ve got to work together on something.’ And we’ve been talking about different things, and he said, ‘Do you have any ideas?’ And I said, ‘You know, this play; I’ve always wanted to do this, and everyone seems to say, “Yeah, yeah, it’s funny, but I don’t know if it’s our thing” — and I think it’s your thing.’
“And The Klunch — which is maybe a less campy, but still edgy, sort of re-boot of Cherry Red, in a way — it fit perfectly. I think the first play they did was an Elaine May play [George is Dead in 2015], and he’s a big Elaine May fan; he’s always been. So this fit hand-in-glove with what he’d want to do.
“And the material sort of straddles…her stuff can be that wonderful New York, Jewish, Borscht Belt tradition of comedy, but, in this case, it also gets very edgy and satirical and — yeah.”
The production will occur at Caos on F Street.
“They did a production of Ian’s one-woman show Laura Bush Killed a Guy; they did that at Caos. It’s a great space. It’s tiny. It’s an art gallery space. It’s got a lot of weird corners and interesting things, but it’s wonderful. It’s an intimate space, and we’re having a lot of fun working with that intimacy, and with these little tiny acting areas. It’s proving to be a lot of fun.”
I asked what the seating capacity will be. “35, 40 people; so it’s going to be very much like DCAC, for those who know that space. But, in this case, it’s more an environmental staging, with little clumps of audience seats surrounding a lot of different little acting areas.”
I asked if it’s a two act play. “It’s a two-acter, yes.” And the size of the cast? “Cast of six.”
Banno then waxed eloquent about the attributes of Adult Entertainment.
“It’s a very funny concept. It’s racy, but it’s not gratuitously smutty. There’s going to be nudity, and there’s certainly sexually frank conversation. But it’s all in the service of the comedy, and being able to milk this premise that she has.”
And who is this play’s audience?
“It’s for folks who like the intimacy of a really tiny space, where the actors are right there. It’s not really interactive, so they don’t have to worry about suddenly being pulled up on stage, or having to pole dance; it’s not one of those things.
“It’s also giving you a chance to see what I think is a particularly good work from an underrated, or maybe under-seen, playwright, who people may think of, vaguely, as, ‘Oh, she was some comedienne.’
“And it’s full of surprises, all the way through. And it’s a good cast; it’s a really nice cast.”
Playing a bit of the devil’s advocate, I wondered whether the play will feel fresh to an audience in 2018, or if it might feel a bit dated.
“I think porn is evergreen. [Laughs] There’s a quote! No, but, really, I think porn has become so ubiquitous now; so many people look at it. Teenagers evidently are completely porn-savvy, just from the internet and all that, so it’s not that kind of forbidden, mysterious thing. I think maybe some of those 90s notions of that particular world would just by definition be dated, but not in a way that makes it feel like the play’s irrelevant. I think what’s being said in the play would feel very naturally of today.
“And, the other thing is, she’s able to walk this fine line between saying, ‘Okay, let’s have some fun at the expense of clearly uneducated B-list porn stars,’ but, then, ‘Let’s also turn the tables, and show you how these people are vulnerable, human people, in a loving community, and let’s not underestimate them, or talk down to them.’
“It kind of turns the tables in a nice way, so it’s not just pointing and saying, ‘Hey, look: we’re superior.’ Part of the fun of the show is…”
To illustrate his point, Banno then described something that, presumably, occurs late in the play.
“Maybe you don’t want to put in that, because that might spoil the surprise. So let’s just say that some of the character’s expectations of who’s limited, and who’s gifted, get turned on their head.”
Readers who were theatergoers during that ancient period, the 90s, at which time Joe Banno was one of the most critically-acclaimed and ubiquitous local directors, and who haven’t seen his name around town recently, may be wondering, “Whatever happened to Joe Banno?”
Those readers anticipate the second half of our chat, but must wait for answers until this article’s sequel appears.
But, don’t worry; that will be soon.
