Patricia Kane’s “Pulp” is both an homage to and a parody of film noir, lesbian pulp novel, and tough-dame movies.
She captures the genre perfectly and 1950s period score, by Amy Warren and Andre Pluess with lyrics Kane, only adds to the campiness of the evening.
“Pulp” takes place at The Well, a teeming-with-sex women’s bar. Vivian is the glamorous owner of The Well, Bing is the resident sexpot and Winchester and Pepper are two other bar employees into this world steps Terry, a plain-speaking butch lesbian.
I saw the world premiere of this play in Chicago nearly 20 years ago, and it was a bit rough around the edges. The Island City production, with Nicole Stoddard’s fine directing, gives it the polish it deserves. Alyiece Moretto’s wonderful set makes the best use of the space, giving us a believable underground bar setting. Ardean Landhuis’ lighting adds to the comic “revelations,” but we could have used some more classic film noir lighting techniques.
The cast is spectacular across the board, although I never for a moment believed that Valeria Di Babbo ever saw a Barbara Stanwyck movie. I didn’t expect her to imitate Stanwyck, but to at least deliver her lines in a reasonable facsimile of her style (it’s part of the joke in the script, after all). But that is a minor quibble, when everything else (including the rest of Di Babbo’s performance) is sheer perfection. The show runs 95 minutes without intermission. I wanted more!
“Pulp”
Island City Stage
Through May 5
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