CARRIE-ING ON

Everyone's talking about Theatre Couture's CARRIE revival--opening soon. Sherry even found a way to call me old in an HX interview! (I may be old, but Shery's no spring chicken herself. And at least I ain't trying to play a teenager!)

HX.COM



HX: If you used real blood, who would you slaughter to get it?

SHERRY: We wanted to use the blood of Lady Bunny, but when we cut her, sand poured from the wounds. Then we tried Shequida, but there were too many “foreign substances” and I’m a purist. In the end, we decided to use me as a sacrifice because I am a virgin. Carrie, 7:30pm, Dec. 2–30 @ PS 122, 150 First Ave (Ninth St), 212-352-3101, $18.



And this from the NY Times:

From "Pygmalion" to "Hairspray," the ugly duckling transformation is one of the great theatrical narratives, but it's one that went disastrously astray in the überflop Broadway musical version of STEPHEN KING's "Carrie" in 1988. So it was with some trepidation that Theater Couture, which occupies the furthest edge of the camp gay fringe, approached Mr. King in 2002 about taking a different stab at his novel. "We argued that 'Carrie' is a modern-day, upside-down Cinderella story, the tale of the ultimate outcast," said ERIK JACKSON, who was seeking to write the adaptation. "And who better than a big group of outcasts like us to do it in a way that would be funny and yet touching?"

Mr. King agreed, and so a nonmusical "CARRIE" rises from the dead this week in Theater Couture's production, which stars Keith Levy (a k a Sherry Vine) as the girl with a grudge and the telekinetic powers to indulge it. Part of the fun of camp theater is seeing what can be done with Scotch tape and glitter, but in this case the effects — flying Tupperware, deadly prom decorations and, most tellingly, an exploding heart — are by the top-drawer theatrical illusionist BASIL TWIST. "And we use real human blood," Mr. Jackson added, unreliably. Camp is often belittled as failed wit, but it is better understood as a form of revenge and rescue, which may make it a perfect match for both Carrie, the character, and "Carrie," the show. Mr. Jackson calls his adaptation "heartfelt camp," by which he means that the winks and exaggerations are disciplined in service of a larger point. Which is? "If you pick on people long enough, they're going to get angry."