Brat Productions – Naked Cocktail

BRAT REMIXES NAKED COCKTAIL FOR GIOVANNI RETRO-FEST

On November 7 & 8 Brat Productions will present Greg Giovanni’s underground classic, NAKED COCKTAIL, one of four productions in the Big-Messy Retro-Fest honoring the playwright’s twenty-year career as Philly’s resident provocateur. In NAKED COCKTAIL, Giovanni concocts a twisted tale of world domination and personal loss with a signature blend of surrealism, absurdism, cabaret, vaudeville, camp, farce and film noir.

The mysterious disappearance of washed-up cabaret entertainer Fifi Flaubert sets in motion a horrifying chain of events wherein we meet Dorian Summerhole, a mad scientist (and ex-lover of Fifi) bent on immortality. Summerhole sings Courtney Love and Carole King songs while harvesting the body parts of people he has killed using giant insects. When he steals the voice of another has-been singer (one Miss Gloria Pudding), Summerhole finds himself pursued by an ex-Nazi with a festering grudge. Insane plot, you say? Perhaps…but with Lenny Haas, Mary McCool and Erik Ransom playing fifteen gender-bending characters, injecting lounge-lizard venom into shop-worn pop songs, and gleefully dancing on the grave of theatrical realism, who cares about the plot?

Director Madi Distefano, who performed with Giovanni during the sold-out run of the 2001 Philly Fringe, will helm a fully re-imagined staging for Brat’s entry in the Retro-Fest. But some things never change: there’ll be plenty of free booze on hand to add potency to the hallucinogenic COCKTAIL. Prepare for the worst hangover of your life!

Naked Cocktail, by Greg Giovanni, directed by Madi Distefano
Part of Big Messy Retro-Fest, Nov. 7-8, 9 p.m.
Tickets: $25
Painted Bride Art Center, 230 Vine St., 215-925-9914, paintedbride.org
Featuring Lenny Haas, Mary McCool and Erik Ransom
Music direction by Andrew Nelson, choreography by Karen Getz