“I wanted to laugh! I wanted to love it!” -but it didn't happen


“I wanted to laugh! I wanted to love it!” A Review by Jim of

The Third Story starring Charles Busch and Kathleen Turner


“I wanted to laugh! I wanted to love it!” Last night 6 friends and I (Jim Dykes) attended Off Broadway’s The Third Story, at the Lortel Theatre, written by Charles Busch and starring Charles with former film star Kathleen Turner. Basically, it is an unholy, disorganized mess-- Charles is always a wonderful, campy performer, but as a writer, this time he’s struck out. If The Third Story was a casserole, it should go back in the oven and cook some more. In all seriousness, I've seen much better shows by Charles Busch…this show is an absolute bomb. Audiences (myself and my friends included) love Charles and even the NY Times’ Ben Brantley (an obvious Busch fan) completely softened his words in a review that really should have been a complete pan. This show should have closed opening night, but it’s still doing very good business because of Brantley’s kid glove treatment and Busch’s longtime reputation for offbeat comedy.

The audience was a typical West Village audience…lots of savvy New Yorkers, regular theatre patrons and many gay men…all excitedly taking their seats and getting ready for laughs that simply never came. As I looked around me, everyone was wondering the same thing: what is this mess? And where are the laughs? I could count the laughs on one hand--And poor Kathleen Turner…she deserves better material…having been sidelined for several days with a chronic injury, she was back onstage last night hobbling around with a cane like an old lady spouting these awful lines which were such an insult to the great film star that she remains. Are jobs for her that hard to come by that she has to do crap like this?

Busch should have had a ruthless director/dramaturge/play doctor instead of longtime friend and “ass kisser” Carl Andress who simply directed the mess given to him, instead of advising the playwright to re-think, condense, clarify and above all, edit. And, my God-- add some laughs! On my subway ride home afterward I was reading remarks by Charles Busch in Playbill Magazine and he describes three different plot ideas he came up with over the last few years: A mafia wife and son, a zombie and mad scientist and a fractured fairytale. On a sudden (misguided) whim, he decided to just combine all the plots into The Third Story.

On a side note: I've actually been introduced to Charles Busch 10 times (at least) over the years but he never remembers me....on top of that, we were both members of a wedding party(mutual friends) several years back (an Irish lesbian and an American gay man were getting married so she could work here onstage and he could work in the UK). Back then Charles was performing in drag in the East Village at some filthy hole in the wall called The Limbo Lounge where I volunteered. After that, he became a huge star and a "critic's darling" with a string of wonderful hit shows he wrote and/or starred in including: Vampire Lesbians of Sodom, Psycho Beach Party, Red Scare On Sunset, Die Mommy Die!!, and the Tale of the Allergist's Wife. However, even celebrities strike out once in awhile—The Third Story was still only mildly enjoyable for the campiness, the fabulous costumes and the first rate actors trying to make sense out of a muddled mess.

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