• • Alas, no one told the paper's Arts Desk that Mae West, writing as Jane Mast, originally titled her daring manuscipt "The Albatross" in 1926 [i.e., 81 years ago]. Well, news in New York can take awhile to reach the other coast. "Following the Fleet" was the play that Jim Timony purchased for Mae and her collaborator to revise. The ladies thoroughly reworked J. J. Byrne's maritime narrative to put a full-frontal focus on the femme. Leave it to the Brooklyn bombshell to whitewash the plot of seamen and emphasize the semen in the story of Margie LaMont in Montreal.
• • Anyway, let's hear from the Castro district's news man and theatre maven Richard Dodds, who wrote this article (below):
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• • Margie of the red-light district;
• • Mae West's 'Sex' appeals at the Aurora Theatre
• • If Mae West had not changed the title of her play to "Sex" at the last minute, would we be talking about "Follow the Fleet" today? Maybe, because whatever the title, it was a racy affair for Broadway in 1926, and the legend that West became would warrant revisiting her early efforts at establishing that legacy. But let's face it, Sex, as a title, is about as succinct, specific, and eye-catching as you can get — — whether it's 1926 or 2007.
• • "We're having so much fun here talking about Sex workshops and Sex rehearsals, and getting a choreographer for Sex, " said Aurora Theatre's Artistic Director Tom Ross. "I'm telling people I'm preoccupied with Sex right now."
• • That preoccupation, to continue the word-play, will climax on November 6th [2007] when Sex opens at the Aurora, the small Berkeley theater that usually has a more serious bent. "This is an entertainment," Tom Ross said of his production. "I don't have to preach about the apocalypse in every play we do here."
• • Mae West wrote Sex under the pen name Jane Mast, and the role of Margie LaMont gave the 32-year-old performer her first starring role on Broadway. Margie is a prostitute working in Montreal's red-light district with a steady clientele and a tough attitude. Ready to break from her unscrupulous pimp, she takes the advice of a British naval officer to "follow the fleet," and she sets up business in Trinidad, where she meets a young blueblood from the States unaware of her background. He proposes marriage, then takes Margie to the family estate to meet his high-society folks — where many, many complications ensue.
• • The critics dismissed Sex when it opened on Broadway, but audiences came anyway for a chance to safely go slumming. It had already run for nearly a year when New York City officials shut it down [on 9 February 1927]. West herself spent eight days in prison for "public obscenity," and her plans to follow-up Sex with The Drag, a play about transvestites, were scuttled. Nevertheless, the publicity was priceless, and she wrote and starred in several more Broadway plays, including Diamond Lil, which became She Done Him Wrong and turned her into a major Hollywood star in 1933.
• • Sex, the play, was largely forgotten. And then it was lost. It turned up again in the late 1990s, and the Hourglass Group offered its first New York production in more than 70 years. Ross recalls reading the reviews, getting excited about presenting it locally, and then letting the notion drift away.
• • It was rekindled about a year ago when he talked to Aurora colleague Monica Stufft about her in-progress UC Berkeley thesis on showgirls of the 1920s. "I looked at the play again," Ross said, "and I thought, 'This is really fun, but it's really creaky.' So we decided to put a little workshop together to see how it sounded. One of the brilliant things that happened was, Delia MacDougall was here auditioning for something else, and I gave her a copy of the script. I didn't know then that she was a big Mae West fan."
• • MacDougall is one the Bay Area's busier and more versatile actresses, having worked at most of the major theaters, and helped found Word for Word and Campo Santo. Before Sex, she was playing Goneril in King Lear at Cal Shakes, and after Sex, she's headed to Marin Theatre Company for a role in said Said, a play about torture and terrorism. Playing Margie LaMont sounds like a lark for MacDougall, but it is more than that.
• • "I was looking forward to doing A Christmas Carol at ACT again this year, which is a really fun show to do, and it's a really great paycheck," MacDougall said. "But then Tom handed me this script, and I felt like I only have so many years left to play this part. And it's sort of a love letter to my mother. She would have gotten a really big kick out it."
• • Growing up in Mountain View, a familiar mother-daughter outing was to a nearby revival moviehouse where a Mae West movie was one of the special treats. "I had a lot of brothers, and early on I was aware of the differences between the sexes, the unfairness that was happening in my own household," MacDougall said. "And then I saw this Mae West person, this creature, and I had never seen another woman with that kind of power. I didn't even know what sex was, but I knew she was holding onto something really powerful."
• • • • Mae West moves • • • •
• • When Sex opened on Broadway [at Daly's 63rd Street Theatre], the full-blown Mae West persona had not yet emerged. And so MacDougall is treading the line between playing a real character while giving it a Mae West spin. "I don't intend to do an impersonation, but I'm considering it an homage to Mae West," she said. "I don't quite have her build, but I'll do what I can physically because I just love the way she moves. I am still trying to figure out what a shimmy looks like."
• • In the original script, West had written in the opportunity to shimmy and sing a few tunes during her character's visit to a nightclub in Trinidad. "The play is an odd duck," Ross said, "in that it's a three-act play and the middle act is basically this big musical show. So I thought, why not do it as a mash-up, taking straight theater actors and mixing them up with musical-theater actors."
• • Ross has turned the three acts into two, and in addition to using the songs that are cited in the original script, he brought onboard pianist-composer Billy Philadelphia to create several new songs. "He's written an opening number that sets up the world of the show," Ross explained. "It's called 'Under the Red Light,' and it's about the hard life of a prostitute in Montreal."
• • The play was originally billed as a "comedy drama," and there are moments when West, as the playwright, raises social and sexual issues that were definitely bold for their times. Ross said he is trying to preserve the seriousness of those moments, while at other times acknowledging the plot contrivances and melodramatic twists. "We need to be winking at the audience at times," the director said.
• • The original Broadway cast of Sex used 17 actors, but Ross is making do with just six. "That's part of the fun, too," he said. "Everyone except Delia plays multiple roles, so we'll have quick changes that should be fun for the audience. It is for us. We're having a good time, and as long as we're having a good time, I think we'll end up with a good show."
• • Sex will run Nov. 2nd — Dec. 9th, 2007 at the Aurora Theatre. Tel: (510) 843-4822.
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— — Source: — —
• • Publication: Bay Area Reporter
• • Byline: Richard Dodds
• • Published on: 1 November 2007
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West • • 1926 Program • •
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Mae West.
Great fun revisiting this older post. This underscores the "ever stimulatin,' never irritation'" Miss Mae West!
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