Hi. I’m Pamela, and I’m a lesbian.
Well, today I’m Dave and straight. It was last night at the Avenue Theater in Denver that I joined the ranks of girls-who-like-girls during “Five Lesbians Eating a Quiche.”
The show, which runs through Feb.28, is a funny, ribald romp through just about every lesbian pun and double entendre you can and would never have thought of.
“Five Lesbians” flirts with improv, inappropriateness, insensibility and side-splitting sight-gags.
The audience gets a name-tag bearing a cliche female name from 1956, which is where the story is set. As “widows” and “sisters,” we’re all invited to the town community/nuclear fallout shelter for the annual Quiche Breakfast of the Susan. B Anthony Society for the Sisters of Gertrude Stein.
Sing it, girls. Don’t worry. The audience interaction is comical and infectious but not invasive.
What begins as some witty and bawdy lesbian jokes and innuendo, on the pace and style of some slick improv, soon has the audience all yelling, “I’m a lesbian!”
About 15 minutes into the show, you begin to wonder just how much more you can see these five funny ladies break eggs over “quiche” jokes.
Rather than run the schtick into the ground, the effort shifts gears and becomes a show by throwing in a nuclear attack, true confessions and enough plotted meat to keep the anti-meat-eater jokes from going stale.
Every one of the five sisters becomes so compelling in their quirks and tales, that it’s impossible not to laugh and feel for the “widows” no matter how absurd the show gets.
While the play never makes a pretense at trying to offer up some deep, meaningful message about gay rights or our common humanity, it points out in a manner slick-as-custard just how silly our society is about same-sex orientation.
Thanks more to the spot-on cast, the show offers up great fun with all the grace and ingenuity of an edgy New Yorker cartoon. The whole cast shines in staying afloat in what could be a sea of cliches and caricatures. They’re endearing but infectiously silly.
Shannon Altner, new to the increasingly impressive Denver theater scene, blurts out oddity mixed with loyalty as Veronica, the keeper of the bomb shelter. Emily Paton Davies, a lauded veteran of metro stages, strides as Lulie, the leader of this pack of curious characters. Laura Lounge as the prim and provocative Brit, Ginny Cadbury, steals the show on several occasions. Her character is built to do that, but she manages to work the thefts for all they’re worth.
Ginny’s table-top, salacious attack of a quiche pan is the show stopper, played perfectly right up to the tossed in line, “she’s doing it just right.”
Lindsey Pierce, as Wren Robin, and Susie Scott, as Dale, both honored actresses on several local stages, keep the show from floating off into inanity. They’re not fun crushers, but they offer the closest thing to depth and poignancy the show can muster, right up until one of them explodes.
The play never goes toward deep because pounding demands of never putting meat in your quiche, drownings at the hand of “Poke” the dad and convict, and nukes lobbed by the commies don’t saddle up well to anything serious.
Instead, the play gallops through the type of gags and jokes that are almost always funnier with friends and drinks. So toss a couple back and join in the fun. Everyone’s a lesbian and comfortable with that here.
5 LESBIANS EATING A QUICHE
Through Feb. 28 at the Avenue Theater
Directed by Edith WeissT
hursdays, Fridays & Saturdays @ 7:30pm
Ticket: $26.50 for adults, $23.50 for students and seniors. Thursday shows are discounted.
303-321-5925417
E. 17th Avenue in Downtown Denver