offthewalltheatre.com
Off the Wall pays tribute to a cult classic in 2015 as it presents Valley of the Dolls. The lurid drug drama film from 1967 gets an drag musical theatre treatment courtesy of Dale Gutzman with musical arrangements by Jack Forbes Wilson.
Jeremy C. Welter, Mark Hagen, Patrick McCann and J.F. Priesz play four women who have their lives turned upside down by pharmacology and trashy ambition in the big city. It may be ill-advised to apply a live contemporary camp mood to a so-bad-it’s-good movie generally recognized as being one of the worst ever committed to film for commercial release. There’s a special kind of appeal in the humor of people really trying to take bad drama seriously as captured on film decades ago. Will that sort of humor translate and mutate well in an intimate space in the heart of downtown? Difficult to say.
Of course, an ambitious project deserves an ambitious opening, so why not open the show on New Year’s Eve? It makes perfect sense.
Off the Wall’s The Valley of the Dolls runs Dec. 31 of this year through Jan. 11 of next year.
