INTERVIEW: Jennifer Van Dyck has a ‘Confession’ to tell in new Charles Busch play
Photo: The Confession of Lily Dare stars, from left, Jennifer Van Dyck, Christopher Borg and Charles Busch. Photo courtesy of Carol Rosegg / Provided by Matt Ross PR with permission.
Charles Busch is back to his cinematic-theatrical ways, and audiences in New York City are all the better for it. The prolific playwright behind such hits as Vampire Lesbians of Sodom, The Third Story and Broadway’s The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife has returned to his off-Broadway roots with his latest sendup of classic cinema. The Confession of Lily Dare finds Busch acting alongside a variety of talented actors, many of them having been with him for years.
One of his frequent collaborators is Jennifer Van Dyck, who portrays four characters in the new comedy, which plays through March 5 at the Cherry Lane Theatre in the West Village. This production, which began at Theatre for the New City, is directed by Carl Andress and produced by Primary Stages. The show tells the story of Lily Dare, who goes from being a convent girl to a glittering cabaret chanteuse to an infamous madame in control of several brothels, according to press notes.
“What’s incredible is coming back to the material, which I love,” Van Dyck said in a recent phone interview. “We worked on it a year and a half ago, and Charles has rewritten it and reworked it. … It’s quite thrilling.”
Van Dyck said that Lily Dare is essentially the same play that premiered at Theatre for the New City, at least structurally, but there have been a series of nips and tucks to each of the scenes and characters.
“Charles found the ‘Find’ tool on his computer, and so he discovered that he had a lot of repetitious words like ‘that’ and ‘for,'” she said. “And so he took out extraneous words, so the script in some ways is much more streamlined. I’ve had friends who’ve seen both versions of it, and they say, ‘I can tell it’s tighter.’ So the storyline is the same, and there was additional rewriting. I play four different roles, and so for one of those roles, the scene was elongated so that Charles could make a costume change. So that’s fun. My baroness has more to say.”
Busch’s costume changes have entered legendary status at this point. He has been not only writing these satires for decades, but he often performs in them, donning the elaborate wigs and dresses of the main protagonist. Few will forget his star turns in The Divine Sister, Die Mommie Die! or Cleopatra. He is one of the most respected drag artists of all time, someone who has also cut his teeth in film, television, books and cabaret.
One of the hallmarks of any Busch production is having one actor play multiple roles, which again causes many hilarious costume changes.
“There are two of us who play multiple roles, Christopher Borg and I, with lots of madcap costume changes in between, and everyone else plays one role throughout,” Van Dyck said. “So it looks like there are about 15 of us on stage, but there are just six of us. … Each time I get to a new character, I’m like, oh, she’s my favorite. Every night I love each of them as I come to them. Charles is amazing because he’s given me such a variety of material to work with, so I play a completely hard-ass bordello madame. Then I become a strangely Eastern European baroness, and then I become a British mother of an adopted child. And then I become that child. I become my own mother’s child, however that works, and an opera singer, and I get to lip-synch to La Traviata. So each role has its own particular roller-coaster.”
Van Dyck is an accomplished performer, having appeared in a number of top-notch productions on Broadway and off-Broadway. She has appeared in Hedda Gabler, The Secret Rapture, Nassim, The Castle and Hesh, among many others. Her film work includes roles in Michael Clayton, Across the Universe and Bullets Over Broadway.
When Busch gives Van Dyck a call and lets her know that he has another play ready, her answer is always an immediate yes. The Confession of Lily Dare is actually their fifth play together, although those five plays have been through nine different productions.
“He’s writing specifically for people, so when he offers me a role, I know it’s been written with me in mind,” she said. “That is a privilege and a thrill, I have to say. Then he listens to the first read-through and then makes changes accordingly. … Last night in the dressing room, there was one line. I said, ‘Have you any ideas about this one?’ And he gave me an idea. He’s an actor and a writer, so he’s got all kinds of ideas. And he’s very clear about which hat he’s wearing. When he’s backstage, he’s an actor, and when he’s in rehearsal looking at it, he’s the playwright. It’s a great division of labor. He’s really clear about how he’s participating in the process.”
Most of Busch’s theatrical projects are inspired by classic films with strong leading ladies. Sometimes, like in the case of Die Mommie Die!, that leading lady turns murderous — all in a campy, tongue-in-cheek manner.
For the actors on stage and the audience members in the theater, knowing the specific cinematic references is not required. The laughs, according to Van Dyck, can be found in the style of the language and the emotion of the characters.
“He always talks about the films that inspired him, but he’s very clear, his material works whether you know the references or not,” the actor said. “That’s the beauty part because if you are a film aficionado and you know every single character he’s referencing, you’ll have one particular experience, but … even if you don’t know the actual reference that it’s Bette Davis or Audrey Hepburn or whoever it is he’s doing or referencing, the play still works because he’s telling a story. It’s all about the story being told, and this particular play is a riff on the confessional films of the 1930s. It’s a genre that is very slim and has very few films in it, and he said, ‘I’d be a fool if I expected everyone in the audience to have seen Frisco Jenny or Madame X.’ These are films that are actually very, very hard to find. I’ve only actually seen clips of both of those.”
Van Dyck said that when it comes to dialogue, she is personally a stye buff. She appreciates language that defines the way people move and look at the world. In her mind, Busch creates a density of language this is quite challenging to pull off.
“Some of his sentences are remarkable,” she said. “What I really respond to his dialogue and his gift for creating very specific characters often, in my case, very succinct form. One of my characters only has one scene, and it’s got to all come out in that scene. Everyone else has a couple of scenes, but you’ve got to grab it and run with it. I love that. His language is very musical, and if you can find the music in it, his melody will carry you. To me, I’ve done a lot of classical theater, and there’s a density and muscularity to Charles’ language that I really respond to because I like the challenge of non-contemporary language. How do you make a very stylized dialogue sound like that’s the only way to say it?”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
The Confession of Lily Dare, featuring Jennifer Van Dyck and produced by Primary Stages, plays through March 5 at the Cherry Lane Theatre. Click here for more information and tickets.
