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Photograph by David Wilson

Photograph by David Wilson

Eric Wertz and Stephen Satyricon (center) backed by the company of Thrillpeddler’s Pearls Over Shanghai.

February 2010

Pearls Over Shanghai a Hit at the Hypnodrome

By Peter Linenthal

The Thrillpeddler’s revival of the Cockettes 1970 show Pearls Over Shanghai, at the Hypnodrome, is regularly sold-out.  Its run has been extended four times, now through April 24. The Cockettes performed at the Palace Theater in North Beach from 1969 until their break-up in 1972. Their first show was an impromptu can-can line. Performances – which included women and bearded men in dresses – grew into elaborate musicals that parodied and celebrated Broadway and Hollywood glamour. Over-the-top costumes, glitter, nudity, and gender-bending were essentials.

The Cockettes left a long anarchic legacy that includes glam rockers, film-maker John Waters and Divine, disco diva Sylvester, Rocky Horror Picture Show, and Beach Blanket Babylon. Founded by the charismatic Hibiscus, the group had a devoted local following, mesmerized by performers who followed their imaginations onto the stage and into the street. The Cockettes had their own commune in a Victorian on Haight Street near Divisadero.

Pearls Over Shanghai perfectly captures that create-your-own-reality spirit in a series of two dozen choreographed musical numbers loosely linked to the saga of a female trio shanghaied into white slavery. Original Cockette Scrumbly Koldewyn wrote the catchy tunes. Amazing costumes and make-up merge Peking opera and Looney Tunes. In rehearsals, original Cockette Rumi Missabu told the cast “Be spontaneous!”  Missabu’s advice paid off; he described the show as “The Little Rascals on acid doing Busby Berkeley in drag.”  The show is both shocking and funny, an unusual combination.

Warning:  not for children or conservative relatives.  Pearls contains frontal nudity, audience participation spankings (voluntary), politically incorrect stereotypes, and much joy. The opium dream sequence is a theatrical tour-de-force.  Filmmaker John Waters described the troupe as “...complete sexual anarchy, which is always a wonderful thing.”  For an undiluted hit of a truly alternate San Francisco reality, go now.

Reservations recommended; the theater has only 40 seats.  The Hypodrome, 575 10th Street at Division.  For tickets:  http://brownpapertickets.com/event/67716 or 800.838.3006.

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