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Starring: Madelene Capelle Written by Brent Buell & Madelene Capelle Music Director/Pianist: Voltaire Verzosa |
It's Dame Edna meets Bette Midler in Undone Divas, the hilarious new one-woman show starring Madelene Capelle and written by Brent Buell. Scheduled to preview in Las Vegas late this year, the show is already generating a lot of interest-simply based on the reputations of Capelle and Buell: the "Diva Team." Set in a sanatorium for aging opera, stage, and screen divas, the show is a slam-dunk romp about minds gone happily wrong. |
She begins to introduce the cast of Divas. "This evening (afternoon) I'm going to introduce you to the ladies of the Opera House! The divas of Happy Haven. These aren't Sondheim's ladies who lunch, but the ladies who lurch . . . to the parapet and fall to their deaths on the rocks below. They lurch down the staircases of foggy Scottish castles consumed by madness and the desire to shop. They convulse in their bedrooms from poison, TB, and bad sex with fat tenors. They are shot, stabbed, strangled, burned at the stake, beheaded, stuffed in burlap bags and thrown in rivers . . |
Next we meet Dagmarra Kaleja Memelatta Hohoravascrotian, a wheelchair-bound diva in the role of Salome. Somehow the opera's story gets turned into a lecture on morality . . . culminating in disaster. |
Soon we meet Madame Belinsky, who once played Madame Butterfly, and has so identified with the role that she stands by a subway entrance in Times Square waiting for B.F. Pinkerton-her boyfriend. In the process she gives a very fractured account of the story of the opera |
The divas sing, dance, and reduce opera to its lowest common denominator-and in the process they go through some $15,000 in costume changes. |
Turandot arrives-explaining that her story is essentially an operatic version of Jeopardy. She and her accompanist manage to turn the entire tragedy into one long dirty joke about hatred of men. |
Carmen is presented as a tale for the cultural edification of children: |
So too, the very right-leaning Madame Shvastika, and the other denizens of the restful Diva Sanatorium |
A parade of church ladies, driven to rage by the indecency of the age, are the setting for a raunchy attack on the religious right. One woman is particularly outraged that a children's reading books begins with the words, "See Dick." |
Martha Stewart makes a brief appearance, as does Luciano Pavarotti. |
Undone Divas is a strictly adult romp through the sacred halls of culture -which leaves nothing intact. Modifications can be made for time and material can be accommodated to appropriate audience. |
Available for booking: 2008-2009 / Running Time: 85 minutes. Running Time adjustable Audience Participation in some segments. Buell-Cline Agency / Contact: Brent Buell (917) 613-7979 (EST) / BUELL28@AOL.COM |
From the moment the first diva appears on stage in a straight jacket-fleeing the sanatorium captors-the show is in high gear. Introducing herself she says, "I, myself come from the City of Brotherly Love. Not Philadelphia! Las Vegas! We have enough sequins and boas to fuel brotherly love, sisterly love, brotherly-brotherly love, brotherly-sisterly love . . . . it's like Oedipus on steroids with a little Taxi Zum Klo thrown in. You can pick up amazing things in Las Vegas . . . . many of them can be cured with penicillin." |
© 2008- Content - Madelene Capelle-Brent Buell Diva Rose Web Design 2008 Divarosewebdesign"at"yahoo.com |
